EPA urges Ghanaians to reduce food waste

Mr Daniel Amlalo, Executive Director, Environmental Protection Agency, on Wednesday urged Ghanaians to reduce the amount of food left to go waste to bring about environmental sustainability.

Speaking at the 2013 World Environment Day celebration in Accra, Mr Amlalo said Food and Agricultural Organisation statistics show that 1.3 billion tonnes of food are wasted every year; yet at the same time one in every seven people in the world go hungry daily and more than 20,000 children under the age of five die daily from hunger.

Mr Amlalo said majority of Ghanaians have developed consumption lifestyles that they cook more food than they can eat and throw the left- overs into dustbins.

The wasted food, he said, end up at land-fills and turns into methane, a green-house gas that is 25 times more potent than the carbon dioxide (CO2) from vehicles’ exhaust, which emits into the atmosphere and negatively impact on the environment.

Mr Amlalo said reducing domestic food waste would bring down green-house gas that unnecessarily emits into the atmosphere and negatively impact on the environment.

He said on the national front a lot of foodstuff are lost during bumper harvest due to inadequate storage facilities and poor transportation network.

“It is at the early stages of the food value chain that these occur due to financial, managerial and technical constraints in harvesting techniques, storage and food preservation.

“Government should strengthen the supply chain by supporting farmers with investments in infrastructure, transportation, and food and packaging industry to reduce the food loss and waste,” Mr Amlalo added.

Speaking on achieving a balance between food production and environmental sustainability, Dr Abdulai Baba Salifu, Director General, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, said the use of boosting actions including mineral nutrient fertilizers to generate adequate food yields negative impact on the environment and also reduces agricultural sustainability.

He said to achieve food production that also saves the environment will  mean using both agricultural ecology and modern plant breeding technologies, as well as innovative ways of creating access to markets for seeds and to sell farm produce at fair prices.

Source: GNA