The Hidden Costs of Wasting Food and Water

Wasting food is not just about hunger and starving people — it is about wasted water, energy, and effort.

Hello readers,

People love food – not only to get enough energy our bodies need but also because it’s often the centre of social events; we celebrate with food, and it’s simply delicious. So it’s quite a surprise that one-third of the food in the world doesn’t make it to our plates. That amounts to an incredible 1.3 billion tonnes of food! This amount of food could feed around 3 billion people each year. That exceeds the number of all the hungry people worldwide by nearly 4 times! Can you guess what we waste the most? Well, we will discuss that later. The day before, we celebrated the International Day for Forests or World Forestry Day, and yesterday we celebrated World Water Day. Both forests and water are the most precious natural resources for food production. World Forestry Day was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly on 21st March 2012. Since then, March 21st every year has been celebrated, keeping the forests at centre stage.

This year, the theme for this day is “Forests and Food” to highlight the crucial role forests play in food security, nutrition, and livelihoods across the globe. With unsustainable food systems driving deforestation and biodiversity loss, the messaging for the day focused on “The ABCs of Forests: Adapt, Balance, Change”—a call to rethink how forests and food systems interact. A- Adapt food systems to work with forests and not against them; B - Balance and share benefits equitably and effectively; C- Change policies.

Forests are the pillars of global food security and nutrition and provide the livelihoods of millions of families. They provide essential foods such as fruits, seeds, roots, and wild meat, the fundamental resources for indigenous and rural communities.

Yesterday, the world observed World Water Day, held annually on March 22nd since 1993 to highlight the importance of freshwater and promote its sustainable management. It is about taking action to tackle the global water crisis. Water resources and food production are closely linked with each other. Globally, agriculture accounts for 72 percent of global freshwater withdrawals—amounting to nearly 3,000 cubic kilometres of water—taken from the world’s rivers, lakes, and groundwater aquifers each year. In developing countries like India, water withdrawal for food production is about 90 percent. For harvesting one kilogram of wheat, more than 1800 litres of water is utilised. That means, when we waste food equivalent to one kilogramme of wheat, we waste 1800 liters of water!

Additionally, there is a wastage of energy used by the farmer to irrigate the wheat crop; there is wastage of manpower, and hard work put in by the farmer physically and emotionally-; then there is wastage of other resources as well.

In my next article, I will throw more light on this aspect of food waste. On this occasion of World Water Day, plan your day to minimise the wastage of water!

(The author is an environmentalist. Views personal.)