Food waste index report 2024
<p>The world wasted an estimated 19 per cent of the food produced globally in 2022, or about 1.05 billion metric tons, according to this new report by the UNEP.</p>
<p>The world wasted an estimated 19 per cent of the food produced globally in 2022, or about 1.05 billion metric tons, according to this new report by the UNEP.</p>
A senior World Bank official said on Thursday that countries should not greatly increase biofuels production until there is more clarity about how much they have contributed to the global food price crisis. Juergen Voegele, director for agriculture and rural development department at the World Bank, cautioned against shifting a lot of the blame to biofuels but also said massive subsidies for the biofuel industry was not helping the crisis.
Asia's response to tightening global grain supplies has aggravated food price inflation and uncertainty, according to an Asian Development Bank (ADB) report released here on Friday. Export bans and price floors imposed by grain exporters including China, Pakistan, Vietnam and India have increased price volatility and uncertainty in the international rice Markets reducing supplies. "These have been contributing significantly to the surge in rice price especially since the end of 2007,' a Manila-based lender said.
THE Chichewa people in Malawi have a saying: Njala ndi chilombo. It means "Hunger is a beast". Today, the beast is rampaging around the world and particularly Africa, where shortage of food threatens to undo recent economic and political gains. Climate change is partly to blame. But there is another less well recognised cause: long-term neglect has left African agriculture in a woefully inadequate state.
Trouble is brewing in the waters off the Chukotka Peninsula in the far east of Siberia. In the past few years, the aboriginal whalers of the eastern coastline who hunt grey whales for meat have reported that an increasing number of the creatures they catch smell so foul that even dogs won't eat them. The few people who have tried the meat suffered numb mouths, stomach ache and skin rashes.
"The United States consumes more cereals including wheat, rice and maize than India.' In answer to a question during his press conference on inflation, Convener of the Congress party's National Media Committee Kapil Sibal quoted the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) to say that while the projected growth in the consumption pattern of cereals in India was 2.17 per cent between 2006-07 and 2007-08, it was 11.81 per cent for the United States during the same period. The average percentage increase globally was only 2.06 per cent.
Nations must act to slow extinction rates, German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Thursday, arguing the loss of species threatened food supplies for billions of people. Just 10 days before the start of a UN summit on biodiversity in the western city of Bonn, Gabriel told the German parliament that both industrialised and developing countries had to step up their efforts.
Yangon: The first of the UN's relief planes landed in Myanmar on Thursday as a US diplomat warned that the toll in Cyclone Nargis could be over 100,000, signalling a humanitarian crisis way beyond the military junta's estimates so far. Worldwide condemnation of the junta also grew, for keeping US aid planes at bay, even as thousands of hungry people swarmed the few open shops and fistfights broke out over food and water in the swamped Irrawaddy Delta.
The Raj Bhavan in Calcutta could plunge into perpetual darkness if governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi chooses to express his empathy not just with the denizens of the state capital but also with the vast rural populace of Bengal. For, figures available with the Centre reveal that Bengal has among the lowest rates of rural household electrification in India despite being a net "exporter' of power in recent years.
China, the world's biggest grower of rice, will start planting the grain in Tanzania next year as global food shortages create investment opportunities for the Asian country, a government report said. Chongqing Seed Corporation, a seed researcher and producer based in south-western Chongqing city, will plant its proprietary rice in a pilot project in the central African country, a report on China's ministry of commerce's website said.
The Bureau of Investigation of Economic Offences (BIEO) of the Assam Police has formally registered a case on irregularities committed by a number of cooperative societies in distribution of PDS items and formal investigation into the matter is on. Police sources said that even Government officials might find themselves in trouble after the completion of the investigation of the case.