The central goal of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) in Africa is to achieve food security by ensuring that every African has regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives. The FAO’s three initiatives in Africa are to (i) work with the African Union to end hunger by 2025, (ii) pursue an inclusive agricultural transformation agenda to reduce poverty, and (iii) enhance the resilience of livelihoods and production systems. In this interview, Winnie Yegon, a food systems specialist with the FAO (Kenya Office), discusses the food systems approach alongside food loss and food waste in Africa.
Winnie holds a BSc in Agricultural Economics from Egerton University, Kenya and an MBA from Thompson Rivers University, Canada. She has special research interests in food loss and food waste in developing and developed countries. She has worked with various stakeholders in the food and agriculture sectors, from value chain actors and national governments to international development partners. Winnie seeks to contribute to achieving global food security.
Flora IP (FI): According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), a food systems approach ‘is a way of thinking and doing that considers the food system in its totality, taking into account all the elements, their relationships and related effects.’ Why is the food systems approach important?
Winnie Yegon (WY): The food systems approach is important because for the longest time, addressing food security has focused on production. But when you examine the complexities of issues around food in our societies, you realise that they are triggered by more than just inadequate production. There are missing links between food production and consumption. Accordingly, the food systems approach encompasses issues and stakeholders that affect food security, which are not necessarily linked to food production. These include trade, education, health, nutrition, infrastructure and finance. For instance, the infrastructure departments in government organisations oversee transportation projects and policies that connect food producers to markets and consumers. The finance departments provide funds for food-related activities. Thus, the food systems approach is a holistic approach that acknowledges all stakeholders that can contribute to achieving food security while seeking to balance issues around and within food production.
Food production does not operate in a silo.
Take Kenya as an example. Applying a food systems approach would require considering the impacts of increasing urbanisation on food security. In Kenya, there has been a surge in the number of people moving from rural areas to urban areas, and this affects food production. One of the impacts of urbanisation is the pressure on land and strain on natural resources like water. To produce crops, you need inter alia people, land and water; urbanisation gradually limits access to these resources. An excellent example is Kisumu, a port city on Lake Victoria. Kisumu is surrounded by rural areas. As people move to Kisumu, the agricultural workforce in the rural areas reduce. There are also pressures to build residential property, hospitals and schools in these rural areas. As such, the rural areas around the city are slowly being converted from agricultural uses to social uses.
FI: A 2011 FAO study estimates that one-third of the food produced for human consumption every year, approximately 1.3 billion tons per year, gets lost or wasted. Please discuss food loss and food waste and its impact on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2 -Zero Hunger.
WY: Goal 2 Target 2.1 on Zero Hunger seeks to end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular, the poor and people in vulnerable situations, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round by 2030. Food loss and food waste are direct setbacks to achieving this target. This is because we put in substantial resources – time, land, labour, water, money and technology – to produce food. Yet, food loss and food waste directly take out of the investment in food production.
When food is lost or wasted, it is not just the food that is lost or wasted.
Food loss begins from the harvest. Some of the factors that contribute to post-harvest losses, such as storage, are issues that can be avoided. Take maize as an example. Poor maize storage can lead to aflatoxin contamination and nutritional losses. Also, transportation and handling contribute to food loss because food is delicate. Food management determines how much food is lost. With the application of proper skills, techniques and resources to manage food after harvest, the amount of post-harvest losses would reduce. Conversely, food waste is mostly at the consumer level. We can tackle this with consumer behaviour changes by disseminating guides on how to manage kitchen budgets, plan shopping, store food at home, serve appropriate portions and re-use left-overs.
Related to SDG Goal 2 on Zero Hunger is SDG Goal 12 on responsible consumption and production patterns. Goal 12 Target 12.3 seeks to ensure that per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels is halved by 2030 and food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses, is reduced. This will significantly contribute to achieving food security without increasing production.
FI: What changes to food and agriculture would you like to see in Africa?
WY: Africa has the potentials and capability to feed itself and the world. It has the right climate, water, soils, seeds and workforce. However, it needs to utilise technologies and develop skills to manage food. Issues it needs to address include food safety standards, market access and value addition. To achieve these, it needs to build capacity across the food value chain. For example, it is essential to build capacity on how to handle food post-harvest. This includes techniques on how to dry food, minimise contamination and store food for future use. Value addition can solve these. A good example is tomatoes, which have a short shelf life. Simple technologies such as solar drying would increase its shelf life by up to one year; making products from the tomatoes such as tomato juices, tomato paste and tomato jam would last even longer.
For more on Food Systems, see here. Food Loss and Food Waste, see here.
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