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Food security & food waste

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Grocers, innovators work to save $31B in food from being trashed in Canada each year. Lori Nikkel first discovered how much food gets wasted in Canada when she was a single mother to three hungry boys in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke.

Grocers, innovators work to save $31B in food from being trashed in Canada each year

Nikkel and a group of other low-income mothers had convinced their local Loblaws grocery store to donate food to their children's school for a student nutrition program. Often, Nikkel found out, the store was overstocked because it ordered too much of certain items. The excess food went to Nikkel and the school — otherwise, it would have gone to waste. "I remember once getting 500 pineapples," Nikkel said. "It was great. " Brexit-secretary-food-supply-dominic-raab-uk-leave-eu-no-deal-a8461771. The Junction gets a pay-what-you-can grocery store. A new grocery store is opening in the Junction and the shelves are being stocked with pantry staples: bread, canned goods, beans and cereal.

The Junction gets a pay-what-you-can grocery store

Campus Food Banks Are More Necessary Than You Think - VICE. "Doomsday" Vault Flooded After Permafrost Melts Due To Climate Change. The fortified Svalbard Global Seed Vault, designed to protect the world’s seeds from disaster and environmental devastation, has been flooded.

"Doomsday" Vault Flooded After Permafrost Melts Due To Climate Change

The culprit? Climate change. "It is a fail-safe seed storage facility, built to stand the test of time – and the challenge of natural or man-made disasters," reads the website by Crop Trust, the organization tasked with protecting global crop diversity. FAQ - Copia. Federal and State laws, along with Copia’s industry leading practices, protect customers from civil and criminal liability when sharing excess food: Customers are protected by Federal and State laws from any liability provided the food is given in good faithCopia’s Food Heroes are ServSafe Certified food handlers.

FAQ - Copia

They undergo enhanced background screenings and extensive professional food safety trainingAll nonprofit recipients sign a Hold Harmless Indemnity Agreement upon sign-up, shielding customers from all liabilityCopia carries a $5MM Insurance Policy that directly protects customers and the food in transit A sharing economy is only as strong as the infrastructure which holds it together, which is why Copia is so committed to security.

Food waste is the world’s dumbest environmental problem. When It Comes To Food, Price And Convenience Matter  Food is not cheap.

When It Comes To Food, Price And Convenience Matter 

High quality food can be prohibitively expensive. Even people who want to improve their diet may be prevented from doing so because of the costs involved. There are ways to stretch a limited budget, but that takes time, knowledge and careful planning. For most consumers, money foremost determines what goes on their plate. No nutritional guidelines or recommendations can ignore that simple fact. Many nutrition professionals seem to believe that almost all people, at least in the developed world, have equal access to fresh, wholesome food like fruit, vegetables, whole grains and lean meats.

When people lose their jobs or fall ill, incomes drop and family budgets shrink, food choices quickly shift towards cheaper alternatives. Cutting food waste helps companies profit. On average, businesses saved $14 for every $1 invested in reducing food loss, according to a new study commissioned by the Champions 12.3 coalition.

Cutting food waste helps companies profit.

That’s a robust return for companies and the planet. The study looked at 700 food companies in the U.S. and 16 other countries and found that a whopping 99 percent actually made money by reducing food waste. Restaurants saw the highest returns, but manufacturing, hospitality, and retail businesses also had returns of $5­–$10 for every $1 spent. Nearly Half of Canadian Students Can Barely Afford to Eat.

Get used to this kids.

Nearly Half of Canadian Students Can Barely Afford to Eat

Photo via Flikr user Marc Tarlock While jokes about students only eating ramen packs and KD seem to be as old as education itself, a new survey suggests it's not a laughing matter. About 40 percent of Canadian students are considered "food insecure" meaning that they have "limited or inadequate access to food due to insufficient finances," according to the survey.

The survey, entitled Hungry for Knowledge, was conducted by Meal Exchange, a non-profit organization seeking to"eradicate hunger in Canada. " The report was published last month and included data from five Canadian university campuses. How Long to Keep / Best Way to Store Nuts & Legumes. What's the Problem with Urban Agriculture? With urban agriculture popping up everywhere, we take a step back and look at some … With urban agriculture popping up everywhere, we take a step back and look at some unresolved issues that need to be addressed before we can consider urban agriculture as a permanent solution to our food needs.

What's the Problem with Urban Agriculture?

Urban agriculture — also known as urban farming, guerilla farming, foodscaping, and by many other terms relating to agricultural practices in the middle of the city — is becoming all the rage in societies all over the world. Urban agriculture provides many benefits, including food security for people in the city, a reduction of energy used in conventional agricultural practices and food service, a reduction of carbon footprints, and environmental services for cities in terms of providing open green space. How Do Tomatoes Get Their Price. The price of tomatoes at the farmers market or grocery store can seem mysteriously random.

How Do Tomatoes Get Their Price

Erratic. This interactive map can help preserve the Amazon rain forest. Here's how. For centuries, indigenous peoples of the Amazon have harvested cacao, coffee, Brazil nuts, hearts of palm and other tropical forest products for their own consumption and for sale.

This interactive map can help preserve the Amazon rain forest. Here's how.

But to this day, practical, commercial and organizational barriers prevent many Amazon producers from getting their goods to market, especially at scale. Pressure on these communities to deforest their territories for short-term economic gain is also hampering the industry. Result: Buyers interested in working closely with Amazon producers have difficulty identifying and evaluating such partners for investment – even as demand for responsible trade continues to grow in large markets such as the United States.

Movement · End Food Waste in Canada. Rio 2016: International chefs cooking surplus Olympic food for city's poorest residents. A group of international chefs has launched an effort to tackle the widespread hunger problem in Rio de Janeiro by cooking surplus food donated from the Olympic Village and serving it to impoverished residents. The 31st Olympic Games in the Brazilian city have faced major criticism as the country struggles through a massive economic crisis. The case for the not-quite-pristine egg.

Egg washing — it’s one of the many unglamorous tasks at my family’s midsized Minnesota farm. We hand gather eggs and lug baskets past our often empty rainwater cistern to the processing building. There we’re federally bound to wash eggs with water treated with sanitizer. Nationally this egg washing process runs through some 600-million gallons of fresh water every year. WhatsApp is changing how people grow and buy food in India. Farmers Santhosh Kittur and Abhijit Kamath wanted to grow pesticide-free vegetables between the rows of banana plots each separately owned. Their shared interest in old-fashioned agricultural practices brought them together to grow bitter gourd, cucumbers, beans, cabbage, tomatoes, green chiles, red peppers, onions, and garlic—staples of the Indian customers and kitchens they planned to serve.

But their modern approach to marketing has put them in direct contact with customers in a high-tech manner. Across India, WhatsApp groups are not only connecting farmers to their customers in the virtual market—they’re creating a network of resources and support for the country’s farmers who need it most. In Kittur and Kamath’s WhatsApp group, created last August, the two farmers post updates from their farms, including photographs, as well as what produce is available to the group’s 80 members. Vegetables are sold on Thursdays and Sundays. “First preference is given to the members of the group. App Lets You Buy Leftover Food From Restaurants And It's Really Cheap. Forgotten Harvest Canada. There is absolutely no risk of liability in donating your surplus food. The Food Donation Act, 1994 protects good-faith food donors from civil and criminal liability should the product later cause harm to its recipient.

Specifically, the Act provides protection for food and grocery products that meet all quality and labeling standards imposed by federal, state and local laws and regulation, even though the food may not be readily marketable due to appearance, age, freshness, size, surplus or other conditions. The Food Donation Act. Ugly Fruit - The 20 Billion Pound Elephant in the Room. A couple months ago the U.S. -based ReFED report came out to much fanfare and massive media attention and for good reason.

The report was a groundbreaking collective effort to present updated data and cost-effective solutions to reduce wasted food. The most notable new data figures showed that we now waste $218 billion in food totaling 70 billion pounds each year. However, one glaring statistic deserves a second look; that’s the amount of produce wasted, before stores, which now stands at a staggering 20 billion pounds a year! Feeding America had completed a study a few years back that estimated wasted produce (before stores) to be six billion pounds of opportunity. 20 billion pounds consisting mostly of perfectly nutritious and delicious produce, that looks less than “perfect,” wasted every 12 months.

How much is 20 billion pounds of produce? Why Buying Local Really Means Supporting Your Community  How Warren Buffett’s Son Would Feed the World. When his three children were young, Warren Buffett installed a dime slot machine on the third floor of the family’s house, in Omaha, Nebraska. Earthseed Detroit: Taraxacum Officinale - The Teeth of A Revolution. We're all mad here. Start - LAND MATRIX. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Food Waste (HBO) International Women's Day: Africa's women need to believe in themselves and start leading the way - Comment - Voices - The Independent.

When we open our newspapers, turn on our screens, attend our conferences or look at high level management, we must ask ourselves questions: where is this African woman? USC Canada - I am a seed saver. Global Food Disparity: A Photo Diary. In an increasingly globalized world, it’s still sometimes shocking to see just how disparate our lives are compared with other human beings around the world. A book of photographs by Peter Menzel called "Hungry Planet: What the World Eats" ("©Peter Menzel www.menzelphoto.com.

Ten Speed Press, published in 2005) makes a relevant point with great irony: at a time when hundreds of millions of people don't have enough to eat, hundreds of millions more are eating too much and are overweight or obese. In observing what six billion eat for dinner the authors note,