Save Food shines in Germany
The second international Save Food Congress was a success in Düsseldorf last week. This two-day event showed ways to combat food losses and food waste along the entire value chain. Participants – including FAO and UNEP officials, the Senegalese minister and musician Youssou N’Dour and former German minister Renate Künast – contributed greatly, while an array of lectures and workshops served to identify problem-solving approaches and options.
The presentation of the recent baseline study conducted by the SAVE FOOD Initiative, which lays out the causes of and concrete approaches to solving the food loss problem in Kenya, was central to the event. It consists of case studies looking at smallholder agricultural operations and fisheries in Kenya intended to illustrate the causes of and possible solutions to food losses. Resulting approaches could be applied to other African markets, as well. These include the development of capacities along the supply chain and the targeted use of technology as well as an increase in training opportunities for growers, the establishment of local warehouses and distribution centres, and raising awareness regarding efficiency and sustainability improvements in general. Specifically, the study deals with the issue of improving yields for milk, fish and maize in Kenya.
Innovationparc Packaging – held on the same days as interpack and thus extending past the two-day Congress – presents best practices from the industry and current projects aimed at minimising food losses both in the producing countries and on the retail and consumer level. UNEP and FAO are among those presenting comprehensive case studies here, which serve as the basis for specific advanced measures.
The Congress was hosted by the SAVE FOOD Initiative, a collaboration of Messe Düsseldorf, FAO and UNEP. It took place immediately before the start of interpack, the leading global trade fair for packaging technology and related process technology. Packaging technology, in particular, can make a major contribution to the elimination of the food loss and food waste problem through the development of smart solutions.
At the conclusion of the SAVE FOOD Congress, the presenters signed a declaration codifying their continued collaboration toward the development of innovative solutions. In doing so, they expressed their commitment to using consistent strategies and constructive measures across the corporate, institutional and national levels.
“The Save Food conference has clearly shown that we need to address the problem of food waste and losses at all levels of the food chain,” said FAO Assistant Director-General Ren Wang. “We simply should not continue to waste and lose food that nobody eats. This is a non-productive use of scarce resources like energy, land and water and contributes to climate change. Governments, the private sector and civil society need to cooperate closely to develop better policies, affordable and sustainable technological innovations and promote behaviour change to ensure that food is being consumed in a more efficient way”, said Ren Wang at the FAO.
