1.1 Solutions To Food Insecurity

Solutions to Food
Security Issues
First, let’s recap what people need
to have food security
Food accessibility
Food availability Physical and economic access to food
• People having enough food of appropriate • There needs to be enough food available and it must be in
quality available on a consistent basis. reach of those who need it
• May include production, storage, distribution • Do individuals and communities have the means with
which to acquire food? For example:
• having sufficient money to purchase food,
• a way to trade goods or services for food
• or the means to produce food independently (e.g.
growing vegetables at home or in a community plot).
Knowledge and resources

Using food safely and applying knowledge about nutrition, clean water, and sanitation when preparing
food
• Is the food being stored, prepared, served and used appropriately?
• What is appropriate will vary between different places and cultures
E.g. eating insects
Knowing how to use foods appropriately could potentially stave off the incidence of food insecurity
So, what are some solutions
to food security?
Brainstorm
Task:
• In this PPT, there are SIX solutions to 1. Reducing food waste - in a
the issue of food availability (and household, this means
therefore food security). throwing food out that is fit for
Solutions
consumption.
• In pairs, CHOOSE TWO of the
solutions 2. Dumpster diving - accessing
research
food waste of supermarkets
• Conduct more research into etc in bins
these two solutions, try and
keep the context Australian 3. Urban farming - including
community gardens, veggie
• Record your findings on the patches, keeping chickens etc
graphic organiser provided
4. Alternative proteins - eating
• Make an evaluation insects etc
(judgement) about which
solution is the best one for 5. Plant-based meat -
impossible burgers, 'fake'
Australia. Justify your response chicken etc
using evidence from your
research and what you know 6. Food relief organisations -
about Australia in terms of accessing food from Food
food, people etc. Bank, Salvation Army
hampers, Second Bite etc
1. Reducing Food loss
and food wastage
• Food loss is food that is produced for human consumption but
does not reach the retail stage
• e.g. it becomes spoiled before it can be sold
• Food waste is food that is made available in a retail setting and is

fit for consumption but is never consumed
• e.g. a household throws out canned food that has passed its expiry date; a
retailer throws away unsold day-old bread
• Nations with the highest level of food consumption also have the
highest levels of food wastage/loss
• For example:
• It is estimated that approximately 1.3 billion tonnes of food
is wasted/lost each year
• Australians discard up to 20% of the food they purchase
• In the UK approximately a third of the food grown on farms
is never eaten
• On average, an American family of four throw away $1600
of food each year
Why Is Food Waste a Problem
The problem of food waste is worse when the issue of world hunger is
considered.
• Although enough food is produced for every single person, 815 million
people in the world don’t have enough to eat.
• 66 million primary school-aged children go to school hungry each day.
• 3.1 million children under the age of five die each year because of a lack of
food.
• Around a quarter of all people in Sub-Saharan Africa are hungry every day.
• Around 40% of children under the age of five in India
are underweight due to lack of food.
We shouldn’t waste food if we have it.

Food Waste
• Food waste costs the economy
around $20 billion each year.
• Each year we waste around 7.3
million tonnes of food – this wastage
equals about 300kg per person or one
in five bags of groceries.
• Food waste accounts for more than
five per cent of Australia’s
greenhouse gas emissions.
• Question: Explain the overall trend in

food waste in Western Australia when
compared to other Australian states.
2. Dumpster diving/skipping:
Reclaiming food
• Food wastage (as well as other retail goods) from retailers often ends up in
the garbage facility of the retail store (e.g. a dumpster behind a large
supermarket).
• In many instances this food is still perfectly fit for human consumption but
has been determined to be not suitable for sale by the retailer.
• This can happen for a variety of reasons:
• fresh produce may be slightly blemished
• the product needs to be removed in order to make room for new stock
• bakery goods may be a day old and not at their freshest etc.
• The act of ‘dumpster diving’ or ‘skipping’ involves individuals going

through a retailer's dumpsters/garbage bins/trash cans and retrieving
this food for consumption.
• Whilst this is an illegal practice in some countries due it constituting theft,
many individuals are able to establish a successful system of procuring
food, and thus ensuring their own food security.
Other reasons we need to reduce
food waste
• Many dumpster divers benefit from the food wastage of
retailers.
• However from an environmental perspective, it would be far
better if this food waste never occurred.
• The carbon and resource footprint created by food production in the
western world is staggering.
• When food is thrown away, it isn’t just the food product itself that is
wasted.
• Effectively, all the resources that went into producing that food product
are also wasted.
• For example, producing one slice of bread requires 42 litres of
water.
• Hence a loaf of bread that is thrown away by a retailer the day
before its use-by date wastes not only the bread, but 840 litres
of water.
3. Urban farming
• Urban farming is the production of food in an urban or highly
populated area.
• Across the globe people are becoming increasingly concerned
about our food production systems.
• This concern ranges from the environmental impact of large scale
agricultural production, to the ‘unnatural’ interreferences with
food production (e.g. antibiotics in animal feed, use of pesticides,
GMO crops etc), through to the dominance of large scale
corporations in the food production system.
• In response to this, the prevalence of urban farming is steadily
increasing.
• This can include the farming of vegetables and small-scale
livestock.
Urban farming
Urban farming can involve:
• Establishing vegetable gardens in
backyards, rooftops and greenhouses
• Communal farming on community
plots of land
• Keeping animals such as chickens and
goats
• Developing aquaponics systems
New food frontiers: Urban farming
• Urban farming allows individuals and groups to
develop a degree of self-sufficiency in producing
their own food.
• The environmental impact of urban farming is lower
than that of large-scale agriculture
• By establishing smaller scale, local operations, urban farms are able to
provide fresh, healthy food to families and communities without the
large-scale use of water and other natural resources.
• The food produced does not require large scale storage or transport
system, which also reduces the environmental impact.
• Many organisations are attempting to develop urban

farms in food deserts as a way of combating the lack
of fresh food available to people living within the
food desert.
• By contributing to the running of the farm, community
members are able to take harvested food home, thus
reducing the incidence of food insecurity in some areas.
How does urban farming improve food security and

how does it mitigate the effects of climate change?
4. Alternative
proteins:
Insects
• Whilst many cultures have enjoyed eating insects
for thousands of years, many in the West regard
insects as off-limits when it comes to food.
• However research has shown that insects
provide a viable alternative to the traditional
forms of protein within the Western diet.
• Whilst matching the nutritional value of many
items already consumed, another advantage of
insect farming is that is uses a tiny fraction of the
natural resources currently utilised by traditional
forms of animal agriculture.
• With growing concern about the feasibility of
our current food production to feed a growing
population, insects have been proposed as a
valuable inclusion into the Western diet.
5. Plant-
based meat
• The animal agriculture industry
has been highlighted as one of
the major contributors to climate
change globally.
• High-level consumption of animal
products (e.g. meat, dairy) has
also been linked to health issues,
such as high rates of coronary
disease.
• Plant-based meat has and is
currently being developed as an
alternative to traditional
methods of meat production.
Plant-based
meat
• Scientists have discovered that the base
nutrients that exist within meat can also be
found within plants.
• They extract these nutrients to form the
building blocks of plant-based meat.
• The second part of this process comes from
cellular agriculture.
• This involves taking a tiny cell sample from an animal,
combining it with the nutrients that would be required
for growth (these nutrients are taken from plants) and
growing the cells into meat.
• This method of growing meat means that no

animals are slaughtered, no methods of growth
acceleration are used (e.g. growth hormones
and antibiotics) and there is a significantly less
environmental impact (e.g. less water, less land,
less emissions).
6. Food relief organisations
• Some retailers are working with organisations to redistribute
food that would have otherwise gone to waste.
• Second Bite (Australia): Second Bite work with Coles
supermarkets to redistribute food to those in need. Fresh food
is redistributed via 1200 community programs and provided the
equivalent of 20 million meals in the 2015-2016 financial year.
• City Harvest (USA): City Harvest collect excess food from food
retailers in NYC and redistribute the food to community groups.
The group has so far redistributed 300,000 tons of food.
• FareShare (UK): FareShare collected excess food from the food
industry and redistribute the food to charity agencies in 1300
cities and towns across the United Kingdom. In 2017 they
provided the equivalent of 28.6 million meals.

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Solutions to Food

Knowledge and resources

• Food waste is food that is made available in a retail setting and is

We shouldn’t waste food if we have it.

• Question: Explain the overall trend in

• The act of ‘dumpster diving’ or ‘skipping’ involves individuals going

• Many organisations are attempting to develop urban

How does urban farming improve food security and

• This method of growing meat means that no

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