The most updated data from the FAO tells us that globally 13% of the food produced is lost in the distribution chain (from post-harvest to pre-sales, up to retail) and another 17% is wasted at family level. In total about 30% of world production. An enormous waste which, as demonstrated by the surveys and numbers we present in this issue, creates social damage both at an economic level, in terms of increased inequalities and poverty, and at a public health level. How to get out of it? How to reduce waste? Much depends on our behaviors and purchasing choices in favor of circular and sustainable businesses. Especially in the period between Christmas, New Year and the Epiphany when the peaks in food expenditure by Italians occur.
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The first issue of the year of VITA magazine (“Social Food Economy”) coming out on newsstands these days and immediately downloadable for subscribers (subscribers to whom we extend our thanks because they allow us to continue to keep the bulk of the content free of this site) shines a light on a phenomenon that has enormous dimensions and negative consequences both on the economic and social system and on that of public health.
In the first chapter Alessio Nisi collects the voices among the others of don Marco Pagniellodirector of Caritas Italiana, by Maximo Torero Cullenchief economy of the FAO, by Andrea Segrèeconomist and scientific director of Waste Watcher International ObservatoryOf Barbara Toci by Ipsos, by Paola Garronescientific director of Food Sustainability Lab of the Polytechnic of Milan. From their interventions it clearly emerges how market logic in the food supply chain determines negative impacts in terms of increased poverty and reduction of income. An investigation accompanied by three pages of infographics by Matteo Riva and two signed interventions. The first of Carlo Petrini (“The food chain is responsible for 34% of global pollution”) taken from “The taste of change” (Slow Food Editore and Libreria Editrice Vaticana, year 2023, 17.10 euros, preface by Pope Francis) written with the French economist and Jesuit Gaël Giraud, in dialogue with the director of VITA Stefano Arduini. The second of Chiara Roversifounder del Future Food Institute which tells how the World Day Against Waste on September 29th was born.
In the second chapter Nicla Pancier illustrates in detail through data and experts the impacts in terms of public health and malnutrition of waste in the food supply chain. They talk Giorgio Sestipresident of the Italian society of internal medicine; Angelo Avogaropresident of the Italian diabetology society; Lucilla Look, nutritional biologist at the IEO in Milan; the epidemiologist Elio Riboli and the head of the vegan nutrition sector of the Lav (Anti-vivisection League) Domiziana Illengo.
Finally, anti-waste supply chains are the protagonists of the third chapter of the magazine. Opening entrusted to Maria Chiara Gadda, vice-president of the Agriculture commission of the Chamber of Deputies and above all the first signatory of law 166/16, the so-called “anti-waste law”. Gadda along the entire food supply chain guides the reader to discover companies that have taken the path of sustainability and the circular economy. Some examples: the Consortium of Sila potato producers, the F.lli Durando agricultural company, the Giardinetto cooperative in the province of Foggia, the Rimini Fair, Costa Crociere and the Grand Hotel Mediterraneo in Florence.
The lawyer and third sector expert Gabriele Sepio shines a light on European legislation by identifying two opposing models: the Italian one and the French one. Gianluca Salvatori instead, it gives an account of the birth of Fondazione Valore, the national anti-waste platform that brings together profit, third sector and public administration.
To close a focus on case history most significant anti-waste measures in the non-profit and profit world, starting from what is now a real federation of food recovery: the Food Bank. Other exemplary cases include, on the non-profit side, the projects of: Acli, Junior Achievement, Arché Foundation, Arca Project, Slow Food and Cesvi. Profit side: Cremonini Group, Carrefour, Coop, Assica, Barilla and Federdistribuzione.