How Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research estimates Global Food Waste can Feed 9 billion people by 2050

Globally, we know how much food the world needs to survive. We even know that we're we'll be having food shortages of essential foods items in the future as our population nears the 11.2 billion people by 2100 mark.

But how much of the food we already produce is being wasted?

According to research done by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany it's pretty high as noted in the article “The First Comprehensive Look at Global Food Waste Is as Bad as You'd Expect”, published August 1, 2016 By Prachi Patel, Scientific American.

Waste Food is any food that is still edible but is thrown away. It can include oversized portions on restaurant plates that is thrown away, imperfect food that could have been processed or even leftover parts from food processing that can be used to make more food.

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research work, which was published in the Environmental Science & Technology journal, made some really startling declarations.

Take a look at this graph produced by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the obvious becomes clear; 1^st World countries are the largest wasters of food on the planet Earth!

Using data from 2010 for 169 countries representing 98% of the World's population, they were able to make estimates about the global state of food waste:

1.      310 kilocalories in 1965

2.      510 kilocalories in 2010

3.      20% percent more food was available globally than what the human population needed

To put this another way, if we were to eliminate food waste, we could feed the world's projected population of at 9 billion people in 2050 without building Agriculture Towers as predicted in my blog article entitled “United Nations Population Division says 11.2 billion people by 2100 - Why Africa and India Population exploding as Insect Meat is coming”. 

So what can be done?

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Global Foods Waste - How to Feed 9 billion people by 2050

Not much really. It's hard to tell what's really constitutes waste food in the first place!

It's difficult to track as no one actually keeps track of what you actually consume and what you throw away. Part of the problem is that a lot of food cannot be safely re-processed and re-eaten.

Also, what can still be considered safe to eat, once the correct procedure to kill unwanted bacteria and other harmful pathogens is applied is hard to determine. 

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research got around this question of what is food waste by calculating the difference between the total calories in all the food a country produces or imports for consumption and the total number of recommended calories for all the people that make up each country's population.

Also, their figures may be overestimates, being as many people eat more than what they are supposed to based on recommended daily calories intake; obesity and malnourishment are the result as the UNFAO and IICA Reports confirm as noted in my blog article entitled “How UNFAO and IICA Reports indicate that Wealthy Jamaicans are malnourished”.

Also our food recycling technology is very primitive; we can redistribute uneaten food, but we cannot molecularly re-arrange food to make other foods, a technology that only exists in the fictional world of Star Trek.

All hope is not lost, however!

Still, various methods of preserving food to make it last longer exist, so food may not be consumed when purchased as described in my blog article entitled “Preserving Food at MICO - How to make Vegetables, Eggs and Shordy Bread last forever”.

We'd still have to switch to growing insects instead of cows and other ruminants for meat as argued by the UNFAO in my blog article entitled “United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says Insects is the Meat for the next 20 years”.

Also more efficient use of the land in the form of Agricultural Towers run by robots is still needed if food is to be grown organically as predicted in my blog article entitled “Why US$80 Billion Organic Farming Industry needs focus on Agricultural Towers, Robotics and School Farms”.

So the future still looks bleak with looming food shortages by 2050, as human greed is hard to change in the next 30 years!