October 16 marks the 40th anniversary of World Food Day. When it comes to food, the first thing that comes to many people's mind is the key word: fill the belly. Do you have any idea how many people are starving in the world? Since its inception, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has conducted five "World Food Surveys" on an irregular basis. The survey data show that hunger, far from ending, is on the rise." There are 455 million undernourished people in the world, a quarter of the population in developing countries, and malnutrition is particularly acute among children and women. "Food is the basis of the whole national economy, food always has an irreplaceable position.
In 1972, due to two consecutive years of abnormal weather caused by the world food crop failure, coupled with the Soviet Union to buy a large amount of grain, there was a world food crisis. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) convened the first and second Food Conferences in 1973 and 1974 to draw the attention of the world, especially the Third World, to food and agricultural production. As it now shows, the global food system is fragile. For the first time ever, the world's undernourished population exceeds 1 billion, which means one in six people worldwide go hungry every day. The rise in hunger is not a consequence of poor global harvests, but rather the result of the current world economic crisis, which has reduced the income and employment opportunities of the poor and significantly reduced their access to food. Experts expect the number of hungry people this year to exceed Europe's total population of about 740 million.
In a year when COVID-19 has triggered a global "food crunch", this year's World Food Day has taken on a very different meaning. COVID-19 is not only having a significant impact on our health, it is also having a significant impact on food production and imports and exports. The UN's State of World Food Security and Nutrition report, released in July, predicts that the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 outbreak will increase the number of hungry people by at least 83 million and possibly 132 million by 2020. If trends continue, the number of hungry people in the world will exceed 840 million by 2030, or 9.8 percent of the global population. Affected by the epidemic, many grain exporting countries restricted or even stopped grain export, which greatly impacted the global grain supply chain and put countries heavily dependent on grain import into a passive position.
Despite the fact that the food crisis exists and is getting worse, people still waste a lot of food. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1/3 of the food is lost or wasted globally every year. The wasted food is up to 1.6 billion tons, among which the edible part is 1.3 billion tons, resulting in about 750 billion dollars of direct economic losses. Moreover, food waste affects the climate and the environment. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's 2019 report, global food waste is equivalent to 7 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, 6 percent of water resources and 30 percent of arable land. Wasting food is equivalent to wasting the earth's natural resources.
In August 2020, General Secretary Xi Jinping issued an important instruction to stop food waste: Despite the bumper harvest of grain production in successive years, we should always have a sense of crisis on food security. According to a report on food waste in Chinese Cities, large restaurants, official dinners and cantons are among the worst places to waste food. As a positive responder to refuse food waste, QUADRANTECO in ensure provide all employees with delicious, health, balanced meals, but also for procurement, acceptance, storage, processing, cooking, implement standardized management, adhere to the measurement system of food, the number of dynamic management, precision catering, according to the number, as far as possible to reduce surplus food. Timely inspection and supervision, timely prompt and persuasion to the phenomenon of leftovers, actively promote the "empty plate action".
This year, the global theme of World Food Day is "Grow together, Prosper together, Build the future with action"."Cherish food" is no longer just a slogan, but should become everyone's action. In order to curb "waste on the tip of the tongue", we need to take active action, not only do not waste food themselves, but also teach our children to cherish food and not waste it.
