When It Comes to Food Waste, Companies are Viewing It as Potential Revenue Source
I was reading a Feedstuffs article recently titled “Focus on food waste needed” by Rod Smith.
Rod quoted a new report by Rabobank International to the fact that “about 1.3 billion tons of food is lost in the global food system every year.” Similar statistics were emphasized during the World Food Prize that was held the week of October 15th in Des Moines, Iowa.
In the meantime, almost 1 billion people are experiencing hunger throughout the world.
It was emphasized that waste generated in developing countries is in the post-harvest stage whereas most of the waste in developed countries is generated closer to the further processing and consumption end.
The current options of disposal, as we mentioned in a previous blog, are limited costly and not sound environmentally.
Some of us remember years ago the story of the unsuccessful journey of a barge full with “waste” left in the United Sates in search for a country or place to dump the waste since the landfills in the U.S. were approaching full capacity.
As the environmental pressure, disposal fees, and commodity ingredients’ cost all continue to increase, it is timely to consider the availability of technologies that can turn those liabilities into assets. Dry extrusion technology has been successfully utilized in the last 20 years in processing such by-products into high quality ingredients.
Rod Smith quoted that agriculture and food companies around the world are increasingly focused on ways to “valorize” waste, which is “a paradigm shift” from viewing waste as a cost to viewing waste as a potential revenue source according to the report’s authors, Paul Bosch and Justin Sherrard, who are with Rabobank’s Food & Agribusiness Advisory Division.
It is time for the agricultural and food companies to view their wastes as assets rather than by-products of their processes.
