The Northwest Indiana Times By Danielle Nierenberg and Matt Styslinger Saturday, December 18, 2010

There's more than enough food to feed the world -- at least there could be. This might not be hard to believe while still enjoying the late season harvests of corn, greens, squash and apples from places like Crown Point, South Bend and LaPorte. Outside of Indiana, however, the problem is that much of that harvest never makes it from farm to table. About half of the food that the world produces is lost before it has the chance to be eaten. This food is wasted through losses after harvest -- from disease, pests, and poor storage and transportation -- using crops for feed in meat production and household waste. With more than one billion people in the world living in chronic hunger, food security is one of the supreme challenges of our time. Too much of the world's food crops are lost between harvest and consumption. This incredible waste not only exacerbates world hunger, but it depletes scarce water resources and increases greenhouse gas emissions. According to the policy brief "Saving Water: From Field to Fork -- Curbing Losses and Wastage in the Food Chain" released jointly by The Stockholm International Water Institute, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and the International Water Management Institute, wasted food is also wasted water. In the United States as much as 30 percent of food is thrown away. That's like pouring 10.5 trillion gallons of water into the garbage can -- enough water to meet the basic household needs of 500 million people. Globally, as much as half of the water used to grow food might be wasted. Food production is dependent on land resources and the availability of water. With rising demand for water-intensive agricultural products, like beef and biofuels, water resources are increasingly strained. With food being thrown away by the millions of tons in the United States -- and contributing to 12 percent of total waste, stress is put on already-bursting landfills and emission of greenhouse gases increases. Landfills account for 34 percent of all U.S. methane emissions. Minimizing greenhouse gas emissions was a central theme at the climate negotiations in Copenhagen last year as GHG concentrations have reached a record high. With landfills producing large amounts of GHGs and worldwide food prices on the rise, the reduction of food waste is an inescapable necessity for people everywhere, from restaurant owners in Indiana to maize farmers outside Nairobi, Kenya.

In some parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 265 million people are hungry, more than a quarter of the food produced is lost before it can be consumed, not to mention the 10 to 15 percent that's discarded during processing, transport and storage. Recognizing the need to protect harvests from weather, disease, pests and poor storage quality, the African Ministerial Council on Science & Technology is supporting research to analyze and promote technologies and techniques that prevent post-harvest waste and improve food processing. Cowpeas, also known as black-eyed peas, are an important staple in Western Africa, providing protein to millions of people. Unlike maize, cowpeas are indigenous to the region and have adapted to local growing conditions, making them an ideal source of food. Making sure the crop makes it out of the field, however, is a real challenge in Niger and other countries. Cowpeas grow only a few months out of the year, and storing large amounts of the crop can be difficult because of pests. But that's changing, thanks to a storage bag developed by Purdue University. The bags, called Purdue Improved Cowpea Storage, or PICS, are hermetically sealed, preventing oxygen and pests from contaminating the cowpeas. According to former Purdue President Martin C. Jischke, "The method is simple, safe, inexpensive and very effective, which means that getting the right information to these people will reap tremendous benefits." With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the PICS project hopes to reach 28,000 villages in not only Niger, but Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Chad and Togo by 2011. And while many farmers are at first skeptical that the simple storage bags will protect cow peas throughout the year, seeing is believing. In each village, bags are filled with cowpeas and then four to six months later PICS has an Open-the-Bag event on the ground with farmers, allowing them to see for themselves that the cowpeas are undamaged and ready to eat and that the innovation can meet their needs. In addition to protecting the cowpeas from pests, the PICS bags also save farmers money on expensive pesticides. Simple, affordable and effective initiatives like these developed in our backyards are helping to prove that significantly reducing world hunger, curbing greenhouse gas emissions and sustaining our water resources are not only necessary but achievable goals. Danielle Nierenberg is a senior researcher with the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C., writing from Africa at www.NourishingthePlanet.com. Matt Styslinger is a research intern for Nourishing the Planet.