Today’s guest blog post is by Young Farming Champion. agroecologist, farmer, author, keynote speaker, climate warrior and Climate Wise Agriculture founder Anika Molesworth
Being involved in the agricultural sector has given me a front row seat to food production. I have stood in fields surrounded by millions of tiny corn plants, filled with awe at the fragility and possibility of this new life. I have seen hour-old lambs wobble to their feet for the first time, cheering on those first steps as it finds its mothers teat. I have felt the sense of pride of being a farmer and growing food with the knowledge that this is going to be enjoyed by someone and nourish them.
So, nothing saddens me more when I read the global stats on food waste.
One third of all food produced is lost or wasted –around 1.3 billion tonnes of food –costing the global economy close to $940 billion each year.
8% of greenhouse gases heating the planet are caused by food waste.
If one quarter of the food currently lost or wasted could be saved, it would be enough to feed 870 million hungry people.
It was with these stats in mind and determination to help address this issue that I caught up with Ronni Kahn with the Young Farming Champions Leadership is Language series.
The Leadership is Language series is part of the Young Farming Champions program, and it exposes some of Australia’s foremost thought-leaders on how we show leadership by the language and communication styles we use.
Ronni is CEO and Founder of OzHarvest. She is the yellow truck driving, dumpster-diving, food waste fighter who has recently released her memoir, “A Repurposed Life.”
Ronni and the incredible team at OzHarvest Education are doing fantastic work on stopping society’s dysfunctional food waste behaviour. Their goal is to adhttps://ozharvest.org/vocate, inspire and influence the community in order to halve food waste by 2030. It is so fantastic to see this work being done because no farmer wants to see their food end up in landfill. This is because it’s not only the food that gets wasted – it’s also all the time, labour, water, nutrients that went into producing it. Precious human and natural resources that need to be cherished, not dumped.
One of the most exciting questions to ask regarding food waste, I think, is
“How do we design waste out of the system?”
This is one of the principles of a circular economy – not just how do we recycle better – but how do we actually create systems where waste doesn’t exist?
Where can we put processes and technologies in place, that an output from one user/sector is immediately utilised as a valuable resource by another.
With one in five shopping bags in Australia ending up in the bin, there is huge room for improvement.
Ronni has a radiating smile as she talks about all the opportunities we have to fix the system and feed people properly. She definitely had me motivated to do more by the end of our conversation! Learning about their objective to collaborate with people right along the food system was particularly uplifting. The OzHarvest team is working with supermarkets, distributors, students and farmers to solve this problem.
We all need to play our part in reducing food waste – from the paddock to the plate – and by doing so, we will
#Zerohunger #Zerowaste #GlobalGoals