According to current estimates, India?s total population will reach 1.45 billion by 2028, similar to China?s, and 1.7 billion by 2050, equivalent to nearly the combined population of China and the United States today. Given that India is already struggling to feed its population, its current food crisis could worsen significantly in the coming decades.

According to the  2013 Global Hunger Index (GHI), India ranks 63rd, out of the 78 hungriest countries, significantly worse than neighboring Sri Lanka (43rd), Nepal (49th), Pakistan (57th), and Bangladesh (58th). Despite India?s considerable improvement over the past quarter-century – its GHI rating has risen from 32.6 in 1990 to 21.3 in 2013 – the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization believes that 17% of Indians are still too undernourished to lead a productive life. In fact, one-quarter of the world?s undernourished people live in India, more than in all of Sub-Saharan Africa.

More distressing, one-third of the world?s malnourished children live in India. According to UNICEF, 47% of Indian children are underweight and 46% of those under three years old are too small for their age. Indeed, almost half of all childhood deaths can be attributed to malnutrition.

INDIANS waste as much food as the whole of United Kingdom consumes – a statistic that may not so much indicative of our love of surfeit, as it is of our population. Still, food wastage is an alarming issue in India. Our street and garbage bins, landfills have sufficient proof to prove it.

Weddings, canteens, hotels, social and family functions, households spew out so much food.  According to the United Nations Development Programme, up to 40% of the food produced in India is wasted which would be enough to feed  almost 300 million people every year. About 21 million tonnes of wheat are wasted in India and 50% of all food across the world meets the same fate and never reaches the needy. In fact, according to the agriculture ministry, Rs. 50,000 crore worth of food produced is wasted every year in the country. The data from  the Municipal Solid Waste Characterization  Repot says food makes up  the largest per cent of waste going  into  municipal  landfills.

Why is food wastage a problem?

• 25% of fresh water used to produce food is ultimately wasted, even as millions of people still don?t have access to drinking water. When you calculate the figures in cubic kilometers, this is a bit more than an average river.

• Even though the world produces enough food to feed twice the world?s present population, food wastage is ironically behind the billions of people who are malnourished. The number of hungry people in India has increased by 65 million more than the population of France. According to a survey by Bhook (an organization working towards reducing hunger) in 2013, 20 crore Indians sleep hungry on any given night. About 7 million children died in 2012 because of hunger/malnutrition.

• Acres of land are deforested to grow food. Approximately 45% of India?s land is degraded primarily due to deforestation, unsustainable agricultural practices, and excessive groundwater extraction to meet the food demand.

• 300 million barrels of oil are used to produce food that is ultimately wasted.

Some facts about food waste in India-

* While India and other developing nations struggle to feed all the population, its an irony that this much of food is wasted and not a lot of people know about this.

*  This is not just a matter of a few lakhs of rupees. If food is wasted, there is so much waste of water used in agriculture, manpower and electricity lost in food processing industries and even contributes to so much of deforestation that occurs because of this sector.

* Taking the above into consideration, the actual worth of money per year in India from food wastage comes to a whopping 58,000 crore.

* The urban Indian is increasingly wasting more food over the years and recently contributing to about 35% of all food wasted in India.

Here?s what one can do on a more personal level to contain the food wastage:

• Plan out your meal and make your shopping list to determine what you actually need for the week. About 20% of what we buy in urban India ends up being thrown away.  You could in the week after cut down on the surplus and soon in two or three weeks you will have a precise list of your family?s weekly consumption. You have no idea how amazed you will be at how much you buy and what you actually consume. Needless to say that the difference is but naturally wasted.

• Buy in quantities you can realistically use. Avoid impulse buys. It will more or less find the bin.

• If you cook at home, make sure you cook keeping in mind there is no excess. You can always complete your meals with a few fruits rather than keep some extra food in the refrigerator. It?s a lot better and a healthier practice too.

• Select according to their shelf life. Use the green vegetables first. Don?t throw out fruits and veggies with ?aesthetic only? blemishes. Use canned and bottled food before expiry dates.

• Reuse the refrigerated left-overs (if any) for the very next meal.

• Even if food gets spoilt then compost it.

• If you work in an office that has a canteen, check with them on how they manage excess food. Cooked food, especially since it has a low shelf life needs to be managed better and faster. Check with NGOs who offer to transport excess food to the needy.

• If you host a family get together either at home, a marriage hall or throw a party at a hotel, make sure you plan for the food to be transported to a place like an orphanage or an old age shelter.

• Make finishing your plate a habit. Try to inculcate it further to as many possible.

India will not have enough arable land, irrigation, or energy to provide enough nutritious food to India?s future 1.7 billion people if 35-40% of food output is left to rot. The  government should therefore consider alternative ways to solve India?s food crisis.

Source- The CSR Journal, India Civic, FCI report, Times of India.