30 percent of the world's agricultural production, a total of 1,400 million hectares, is wasted each year. The deputy director of the Food Chain Structure of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment, Esther Valverde, has announced that food waste in Spain amounted to 7.7 million tonnes a year, "a fact that makes us the seventh European country that wastes the most food", followed by Italy and Poland with 8.8 and 9 tons, respectively.
Esther Valverde has taken part in a promotional event at the Mercado de la Paz in Madrid, on the importance of taking advantage of food as part of the Food Waste Reduction Week that the Ministry developed between June 2 and June 7. The initiative includes a program of promotional activities aimed at media, school, hotel professionals, catering, distribution and end users.
In her speech, Valverde suggested there was the need to increase collaboration among all sectors, from production and distribution to consumers, "in order to achieve a more efficient operation of the processes involved in the food chain to effectively reduce the amount of food being thrown away." The results of these initiatives "provide social, economic and environmental benefits for the whole society," she added.
Esther Valverde said that many actions within the five areas of action of the strategy More Food, Less Waste, launched in 2013 by the Department, "have already been implemented and are working as expected."
These areas relate to the development of areas of knowledge about the limits and circumstances affecting the food waste issue, the establishment and identification of best practice models and strategies to disseminate and promote them, policy issues that may affect food waste, collaboration with other agencies and the promotion and development of new technologies that help minimize the amount of food wastage.
It is, concluded Valverde, "about promoting a change in attitudes, working methods and activities of all stakeholders in the food chain in order to prevent food waste; a problem that affects, not only Spain, but also to Europe and the rest of the world."
Source: valenciafruits.com