Throw out your food - Take 2

A follow on from my original entry about food waste as Brown over in Japan is urging us to cut our food waste. Here's the story from the Guardian.

the UK throws away an annual 4.1m tonnes of edible goods

Wow because WRAP was talking about 6.7m tonnes, and the BBC was talking about 3.3m tonnes, makes one really trust these figures.

Anyway the whole point is that food costs more and it's not his fault, that lower-income families are spending a greater percentage of their income on food and it's not his fault (oh wait a sec, yes it is)

The poorest 10% of UK households spent 15 % of their outgoings on food in 2005-06, while the richest 10% spent just 7%.

Um duh, hold on where's my stats sheet. The median annual gross wage of the bottom 10% of all full and part-time workers in 2007 was £6,192, the top 10% £42,902. So the bottom 10% spend ~£929 and the top 10% ~£3,003 a year. Oh yeah percentages are really useful in this instance.

[the UK throws away] the equivalent of £420 for every home.

Yeah somehow I don't think those bottom 10% are throwing away nearly half their food purchases do you?

[food prices] have risen significantly - due to a combination of poor harvests, higher costs for energy used in agriculture and transport, diversion of some commodities to biofuel, and a long-term rise in demand for grain to feed a growing global population.

Poor harvests - blame the screwy weather (nothing to do with us, well maybe, or maybe not); higher costs for energy - done that; biofuel - yep that's got to be the biggest ironic twist; rise in demand - those damned Chinese thinking they can eat like Westerners, who do they think they are?

So the solution being proposed is an "international body to oversee food security" just what we need another bloody committee. Who's betting that is this body comes into being food quotas will be the next step.

Okay fair cop our food prices have been damn cheap and we've got spoiled by them, but the prices have shot up not because of any market readjustment but because of greed and 'panic'. Like water and energy, food is a necessity and it's all been placed in the hands of companies whose sole function is to make money.

Unlike energy the supply really has gone down while demand has increased so who can be shocked that the price increases; the laissez-faire marketers state that the increase in prices will lead to more people entering the food market because there's profit to be made now. Yep start tearing down those rainforests we need more growing area there's profit to be made.

Here's an interesting stat from an American department - each citizen requires 1.2 acres to provide the standard amount of food they consume. So for the UK population of 60m we need ~295,000 km² to live at that level. Land area of the UK - ~242,000 km². Self-sufficiency advocates take note.

[To contrast the US needs ~1.5m km² and has a land area of ~9m km². China needs 6.4m km² and has a land area of 9.3m km²]