Food wastage: 5 things you can do about it

Wastage of food is a serious issue.Unfortunately, that has not been talked about until now. Fortunately though, its finally out in the open.

As always, some people are talking the issue by pointing fingers at some countries and communities for wasting food and aggravating food insecurity in the poorer areas. And then there are some who are busy denying the charge. The question is, is there something you can I can do in the meantime to stop food wastage? My answer: yes course!

1. Spot it within, before you spot it outside: Most people in our country think, food wastage is happening only in the developed nations. Well, I say, they are wrong. This is a chronic callousness every country suffers from. And I have a personal story: When I was about 7, I used to leave a little rice on my plate every day. I felt, I was full and would throw up if I ate an extra morsel.  And I also thought, it was ok to leave food. Then, one day, my mom caught me and talked me out of the habit.

Today, when I visit homes of friends, relatives or colleagues, I see the familiar scene: kids - and grown ups - leaving food on their plate and not caring.  These are not rich people, but are richer than those who struggle to buy a single meal. And they waste food.

So, before you write or talk about it, take a harder look at the people sitting at meals at your home and see, are they wasting food? If yes, that's where you spot the problem first!

2. Rid the habit, connect the dots:  When my mother caught me wasting food, she didn't scold or punish. Instead, she told me, 'you see that grain of rice? its for this that your Daddy isn't living with us.'

 My dad was working for a private farm in Dubai. At school/social events, when other kids had their parents by them,  my Dad wasn't there with me or my siblings and I felt sad. Now, my mom made me see the connection between my loneliness, absence and my dad and my eating habit. And even at that age, I could understand that if I wasted food, I would fail my Dad who worked so hard, so far to get me that food. Since then, I have carried that thought with me.

Yes, emotions such as this that can help connect the dots, can be built early on. You can do the same!

3. You see, you show: In 2010, I got my fist dose of large scale food wastage when I was in Germany to attend a youth meet. Our host - a political think tank - had got us there to brainstorm on how the world could be reshaped to make it more sustainable. And everyday, at the lunch and dinner, I saw these huge trays full of food just lying there, cold and untouched. I learned that it was going to go to land fill.  I was horrified.

And I expressed my horror on the last day when the host asked us to give our feedback on the event.'You get us here and ask us about making the world sustainable. Well, this is where it begins - stop wasting food, so there will be food sustainability for all.'

If you think they hated my plainspeak, think again! The organization actually hired me during RIO+20, to write for a new portal they had launched on sustainability!

4. Lose that hoarding habit: My second big food wastage experience happened in New York last fall, when I was touring the US as a speaker on empowering women with digital technology. We - a group of 5 girls - had rented an apartment for a week in Brooklyn. There was a large refrigerator in the kitchen stashed with so much food, you would think there was going to be a war and someone had stacked up for a month!

 But, we were out all day, returning late and had no time to cook. So, we took out food from restaurants on our way back and ate that. The result? The huge pile of food in the fridge just sat there, unused. Then, the day we left, the landlady (who, incredibly, was also very interested in 'green living' and said she grew organic food) turned up, put everything in large trash bags. You can imagine the rest.

If only the lady had cared to NOT hoard so much food, it would NOT have been wasted.  But what she didn't do is what you can do: Not be a hoarder.

 

5. Care: Of course, it all begins here, by caring to know what happens when people waste food, how people in another part of the world die to have the amount of food that you throw away everyday and how over consumption(which is actually not even consumed, but wasted) of food in one part of the world causes imbalance in food distribution system, creating scarcity in another part. Many people know it, but they do nothing. Because, they don't care.

But if you know and care, you are putting effort to end food wastage, no matter how small. After all, drops do fill the ocean, don't they?

War against rape: we must first own responsibility

Something extraordinary happened today: the police re-arrested Bitty Mohanty, a rapist who was convicted 6 years ago but had run away. I call this extraordinary because it shows the administration is ready to take rapes seriously. The question is, can solo action like this make India safe for women? As my answer to this question, I share here my Op-ed that was recently published in Huffington Post..
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It has been more than two months since the December 16 gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in New Delhi. Since then well over a million people -- men and women, young and old -- have taken to the streets to condemn the rape and demand justice.


They have marched in silence, holding placards with messages like "Death to the Rapists," "Save Our Women," and "End Rape Now." The protests have taken place in almost every city: Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, and Kolkata. Even small towns like Lucknow, Ahmedabad, and Pune have been a part of the action. In my own city of Hyderabad in the south of India, women have for the very first time taken part in a midnight march to claim their rights to be out on the street at any time. In Bangalore, men marched on the streets wearing skirts -- their way of showing that a woman's choice of clothing does not cause a man to rape.

Photo courtesy: One India

Every day, I see photos of protest marches on my Facebook feed, and Twitter users have generated well over a million tweets with hashtags like "delhigangrape" and "braveheart" -- the name the media gave to the anonymous rape victim.

As yet another Indian woman who has experienced molestation and sexual harassment early in her life, I have found these developments both sad and electrifying. Sad because a woman was tortured and murdered, but also sad because this was probably the 5,000th time I heard of a woman in India being raped. Statistics from the National Crime Record Bureau of India show that since 1953 there has been an 873 percent rise of rape cases in India. In 2012 alone, we have seen horrific rape cases involving four-year-old baby girls and 80-year-old women. But never, ever have I seen a group of even 100 people come together to protest these acts.

Inclusive growth excluding women? Stop kidding!

I just returned from the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS 2013) in New Delhi. And I can tell you this: it was a man's world!

Photo courtesy: Morten Svenningsen

Consider this: a mega 3-day event where a galaxy of stars descending from across the globe on hotel Taj Palace, rubbing shoulders with each other, speaking, sharing ideas and strategies on how to build a sustainable economy that will help us get green, inclusive growth.

(Actually, the event was a follow up on the Rio Earth summit 2012. Therefore, the slogan was 'The future we want.')

And, speaking about the 'future we want' were 101 speakers. Of them, 89 were men.
That's right. Of the 104 speakers deliberating on the future we want, there were no more than 12 women.

What does this tell us? that women don't matter? that, there are no women experts who have enough know how on green growth or green economy or renewable, clean energy?  or, that, the organizers did not think it was a big deal if there were only a  token representation of women at an important meeting such as this?

2012: 10 Lessons India Taught It's Women

Lesson 1. Rape is on the rise and Woman, its thy fault

Rapes in India have risen by 873% in past five decades. And from politicians to members of  the parliament to top cops, everyone thinks that its majorly women's fault. Here is a sample: right at the beginning of the year, Dinesh Reddy, the Director General of Hyderabad (where I live) said, "rape is increasing because women have started dressing fashionably" and ‘women provoke men to rape them by wearing flimsy clothes.’

(Oh, and the cop not only got away with that,  but actually got a pat on the back. Last month, he became the president of Indian Hockey Federation. Don't be surprised if our women hockey players are now ordered to play in Pyjamas!)

Lesson 2. Know that thy Law maker's job includes watching Porn at work and preach you on decency

It's a male law maker's prerogative to chastise women and decide what kind of clothes they will wear, even when he will watch porn, right inside the assembly building.

Example: A minister in Bangalore, was caught watching a porn clip right within the state Assembly in February this year. The minister had advised women many times to wear less revealing clothes to avoid getting raped. 

Migration: Prevention Is Always Better than Cure

It is International Migrants day and since morning, a series of faces have been passing before my eyes. These are faces of women whom I have met in recent times and found, they were all victims of climate change. It affected each of them in a different way, but at the end of the day, uprooted them from their homes and turned them into migrants with an uncertain future.

Let me share the stories of five of them.

Akshaya, Hyderabad - Migrant, because there was no WATER.

Akshaya Gaud is 24 and a commercial sex worker. She migrated from Adilabad - a district  in Andhra Pradesh state of southern India that has been severely affected by consecutive droughts. Akshaya migrated 2 years ago to Hyderabad because there was no water. All the ponds dried and ground water level depleted so much, borewells could not produce any water. When I interviewed her for my story 'Drought drives rural Indian women into city sex trade' , she said this: “The last time I visited my home, there was hardly enough water to drink. When I returned, I brought back a bundle of unwashed clothes with me because there was no water to wash them. How can we live like this?” 

In Photos - COP18

I just returned from Doha, covering for eight days the UNFCCC Climate conference (COP18). Compared to COP17 which was held in Durban, South Africa last year, this year's COP was quieter as the total turnout of people - at least journalists - was much lower. But there were some interesting sights nonetheless. Sharing here some of those interesting moments from the event that can be called the Kumbh Mela of environment.

Doers, in the middle of talkers. The three winners from (L-R) Turkey, Haiti and Uganda of 'Land for Life award', given by United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). In a town full of bargainers and talkers, it was refreshing to meet these three people who were working hard to reclaim, save and improve the quality of land in their respective countries.

The venue  - Qatar National Conventional Center (QNCC) was huge.  Really, really huge. And so was pretty much everything - the meeting halls, staircases and even the washrooms. But compared to COP17 in Durban, the total turnout of participants was much lower and it showed. The press section was particularly quieter and empty at times. Only 400 journalists turned up this time, compared to 3000 in Durban.

Climate smart agriculture: is assumption feeding farmers’ fears?

The following blog was published on the website of United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). You can read the original write up here.

Doha, 01/12/12. Chief Adam Tampuri is a cashew farmer from Ghana in West Africa. Last year, Tampuri has lost fifty cashew trees, but he does not know what killed them. ”They just dried up one by one. Nowadays, we are getting strange plant diseases we never saw before,” said Tampuri at a side event at the 18th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP18) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change today.

The loss of the trees has directly impacted Tampuri’s living condition: as a cash crop, the cashews are an important and dependable source of his monthly income. Fewer trees, therefore, mean that the money that will come from the sale of cashews will not be enough to buy food.

Despite the loss, Chief Tampuri is hesitant to try climate smart farming techniques, especially soil carbon sequestration. “Climate smart agriculture (CSA) will benefit only large corporate houses and not us small farmers,” he commented.