Farmers key in low-carbon agriculture

Sharma El Shiek, Egypt: As the world seeks potential solutions to reduce carbon in the atmosphere, agricultural partnerships are required to reduce food waste.

The World Farmers Organisation (WFO) is concerned that food produced with limited resources such as water and land is wasted.

Food loss and waste are serious problems that occur at various points along the food supply chain. Malawi loses about 40% of its post-food harvest, and the world loses 30%.

In addition to food wasted on the table, National Smallholder Farmers' Association of Malawi (NASFAM) Chief Executive Officer Betty Chinyamunyamu, who was one of the panellists during a discussion on how to scale up practical solutions to accelerate industrial decarbonization by 2030, said that more food is wasted simply because the consumer finds it unappealing.

“When working with big multinationals, there are some quality standards that are coming in from the consumers but contribute to food waste on the farm specifically you may be aware that there are some standards that have nothing to do with safety but just the way the product looks. That product is taken as if it is not good enough and it is not bought by the multi-national and that because there is no buyer it contributes to waste on the farm.” Chinyamunyamu said.

Farmers, she says, are part of the green economy solution and should be considered as long-term business partners because farmer failure affects the entire food system.

She said that there is a direct link between food waste and climate change because the more food that is wasted, the greater the demand for more food, which requires more natural resources such as water and land as well as fertilizer and energy used in the production are lost.

She stated that in this day and age of climate change, farmers are looking for alternatives that will allow them to produce more with fewer resources, and that food waste must be avoided at all costs.

Chinyamunyamu said companies have a role to play in ensuring that their adverts are able to portray the reality that a farmer produces crops in different colours, sizes, and shapes and that they are safe as long as they are not rotten.

“Adverts are also perpetuating food loss and food waste. They need to show realistic images of the products that are in different shapes, colours, and sizes. The more the consumer gets the realistic image the more they accept the reality,” she said.

As a response to food loss and food waste, Unilever shared with the COP27 delegates how the company introduced a green tomato sauce to portray to people that tomato sauce should not only be in red colour. Statistics show that Over 10% of the global tomato crop is wasted – that’s up to 8 million tomatoes – because they aren’t red enough to go into ketchup.

Malawi Planning Commission Development Planning Manager Sipho Billiat, who is also in attendance at COP27, stated that his organisation emphasises industrialization, with one component being farmer capacity building.

.“We are looking at how we can increase production. Both large-scale farmers and smallholder farmers in Malawi are not able to meet the demand This is why we still import food. The plan for MPC is to strengthen the farmers’ capacity so that they are able to produce quality products that should not be rejected on the market. We also want farmers to be able to aggregate and access markets in large volumes,” Billiat said.

The COP27 Decarbonisation Day provided an opportunity for delegates to discuss approaches and policies with the goal of encouraging and facilitating the much-needed transition and paradigm shift towards a low-carbon economy.