Hunger is a logistical issue

There are nearly 800 million hungry people around the globe.

There is no food shortage. Hunger is a logistics problem. This crisis involves all aspects of the supply chain, including storage, transportation, packaging, international shipping, customs clearance, roads, tracking and visibility.

In rural Africa, food often goes uneaten and wasted because supply chains aren’t delivering small-scale farmers’ surpluses to their local or regional markets. This is common in many regions.

About a third of the food produced in the world is wasted. Some of it rots in warehouses while it waits to go to market. Some rots in ports and at border crossings waiting for clearance. And some rots in the field because it’s just not economically beneficial for the farmer to harvest it.

In India, an estimated 30% of fruits and vegetables rot before they reach the market. This is due to a lack of cold storage facilities. Meanwhile, farmers in sub-Saharan Africa lose 30% to 40% of their harvested crops each year to insects, mold and moisture.

In Africa, the amount of food that goes bad is enough to feed 49 million people.

[Read full CNN article]

This entry was posted in Humanitarian Aid, International Cooperation by Grant Montgomery.