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Food Waste and Hunger Exist Side by Side |
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By Haider Rizvi*
Around
100 billion pounds of food are wasted annually in the United States.
It would take just one out of every 25 pounds wasted to feed the
30 million people who go hunger in this affluent nation, according
to the group Food Not Bombs.
NEW YORK - ''Do you want these? They are so
fresh,'' says Catherine, holding up a bunch of grapes she just pulled
out from one of the trash bags piled up on the sidewalk. ''Take
this, man. It's good too,'' adds her friend Morlan, holding out
a loaf of bread.
Though happy to have found something for dinner, both Catherine,
21, and Morlan, 19, wonder why some edible food is thrown out as
garbage in New York City
''They only sell this food to the rich,'' says Catherine pointing
to the upscale grocery store that put out bags.
Inside the store, the manager is visibly upset with Catherine and
other young people who are stuffing their backpacks with fruits
and vegetables from the trash bags. ''They are picking up garbage,''
says the manager. ''I don't know why the hell they are doing this.''
''I have zero cash right now, and no place to stay,'' says Morlan.
''What do you expect me to do?''
Such scenes are becoming increasingly visible on the streets of
U.S. cities these days, despite the enormous quantity of food that
the world's most affluent nation produces every year.
Official surveys indicate that every year more than 350 billion
pounds (160 billion kilos) of edible food is available for human
consumption in the United States. Of that total, nearly 100 billion
pounds -- including fresh vegetables, fruits, milk, and grain products
-- are lost to waste by retailers, restaurants, and consumers.
By contrast, the amount of food required to meet the needs of the
hungry is only four billion pounds, according to Food Not Bombs,
an advocacy group, which estimates that every year more than 30
million people in the United States are going hungry on regular
basis.
''The American government has billions of dollars in surplus money,
which could go towards poverty elimination nationally or globally,''
Samana Siddiqui of the Sound Vision Foundation, a Chicago-based
non-profit group, told Tierramérica.
But Joyce Glenn, a novelist who lives next to the grocery store,
where Catherine looks for food in the trash bags, has a different
take on the wastage of food and over-consumption in her country.
''Americans consume as much as they are able to lull themselves
into a sense of complacency as long as the need for food, as well
as even luxurious food, gives them a sense of well being,'' says
Glenn, who is in her 60s, and often invites homeless people she
sees in the street into her home.
Noting that food production in the United States and the world has
increased more than the population, food rights groups say they
believe more people are likely to suffer from lack of food as long
the agri-business firms continue to be driven primarily by profits.
''We don't have a democratic say in how food is produced or distributed,''
according to Food Not Bombs. ''In our society, it is acceptable
to profit from other people's suffering and misery.''
The group's position is based on the assertion that people from
the more affluent and middle class sectors of U.S. society are drawn
to over-consumption as a lifestyle -- validated by a study carried
out by the Washington-based World Watch Institute early this year.
''U.S. consumption styles have not only spread to other industrialized
nations,'' says the State of the World 2004, ''they have succeeded
in penetrating much of the developing world as well.''
The study shows how millions of middle class people across the globe
have adopted the diets, transportation systems and lifestyles pioneered
in the United States.
To some degree, ''rising consumption has helped meet basic needs,''
said World Watch president Christopher Flavin. ''But this unprecedented
consumer appetite is undermining the natural systems we all depend
on, and making it even harder for the world poor to meet their basic
needs.''
According to the report, the U.S. and Western European consumers,
who constitute only about 12 percent of the world population, are
responsible for about 60 percent of consumption of private consumer
goods.
By contrast, the people of Latin American and the Caribbean, whose
share in the world population is just nine percent, spend only seven
percent on non-essential household goods.
''Agriculture, free trade, and intellectual property policies have
become a leading edge of the U.S. corporate push for global economic
dominance,'' says Kathy McAfee, executive director of the San Francisco-based
Institute for Food and Development Policy (better known as Food
First).
''But at the same time,'' she adds, ''farmers and ecologists around
the world have been achieving impressive successes in increasing
food production by sustainable methods. We are seeing the mobilization
of hundreds of thousands of small farmers from Mexico to Brazil,
from India to Thailand to the Philippines in defense of their rights.''
* Haider Rizvi is a Tierramérica contributor.
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