#1 Victorian uni for graduate employment¹

#1 in the world for sport science²

#1 Victorian uni for course satisfaction³

For career and life, this. gives you practical advice to help you on your journey.

EXPLORE BY TOPIC

About

Curious about this.? Find out more

Contact

Have something to share?
Contact us

NEXT UP ON this.

How can we have food waste and hunger at the same time?

It seems like a simple enough question: how can food waste and hunger exist at the same time?

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reports that in 2023, 1.3 million Australians experienced food insecurity – defined as ‘whether an individual can access food in the quantity and quality that they need to live an active and healthy life’.

At the same time, the Government’s National Food Waste Strategy Feasibility Study estimates that each Australian wastes around 300kg of food each year – a total of 7.6 million tonnes. So how is it possible that when we have millions of tonnes of food going uneaten, we also have millions of people without enough food on the table?

As it turns out, the problems of food waste and hunger are highly complex – and deeply connected. To help us untangle the threads – and to understand the causes of these issues – we spoke with Dr David Giles, a senior lecturer in Deakin’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Why is food waste a problem?

First, we need to define what food waste actually means. It may seem simple, but it’s trickier than it sounds. As Giles notes, that challenge reflects the complexity of the issue.

‘Food waste doesn’t have a single universal definition because the definitions of “food” and “waste” are both relative,’ he says. ‘The term is generally defined as edible food that has nonetheless been discarded. In some industries, this is sometimes distinguished from “food loss,” which is formerly edible food that has been discarded due to spoilage.’

Food waste has wide-ranging socioeconomic and environmental issues, as Giles explains.

‘Food waste is a socioeconomic problem to the extent that it makes food more expensive and harder to acquire,’ he says. ‘In essence, it manufactures scarcity – prioritising the growth of commercial profit over the needs of consumers – especially food insecure Australians. It also devalues the work and wages of those people who grew the food, transported it, processed it and so on.’

On the environmental side, Giles says that food waste ‘increases our carbon footprint and other “externalities,” or environmental costs that must eventually be paid for by future generations – including resources expended to produce the food, the greenhouse emissions of food from landfills and the lost environmental value of food reintroduced into the ecosystem – for example as compost.’

What are the causes of food waste? From overproduction of food to liability concerns

Clearly, we need to combat food wastage – but to do so, we need to work out what causes food waste in the first place. In industrialised nations like Australia, there are two broad causes of food waste: consumer excess and industrial pressures. And while we’ll detail the specifics of both causes below, Giles suggests that they’re not exactly separate.

‘Consumer excess and industrial pressures are ‘two sides of the same coin – a system that situates us at the end of a commodity chain, rather than in the midst of a web of social and environmental relationships,’ says Giles.

‘The commodity chain functions as if resources and growth are both infinite, which of course, is impossible,’ he adds. ‘In contrast, if we’re imagining alternatives, we could take inspiration from Potawatomi First Nations biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer, who encourages us to think about food as part of a gift-economy between us and the natural environment.’

Consumer excess

According to Giles, most of the food waste in a country like Australia is created by consumers – whether that’s food left uneaten in restaurants or food discarded at home. A fact that, on the surface, makes it hard to reconcile the ideas of food waste and hunger. But while everyday Australians contribute heavily to our country’s food waste, the underlying causes are deeper and more systemic. These include:

Industrial pressures and incentives: This includes the pressure to ‘maximise consumption and economic throughput’, according to Giles.
Diminished cultural knowledge about food safety and recovery: Including knowing if food is safe to eat, rather than relying on use-by dates, and knowing ‘how to prepare or store food to be used more efficiently.’
Social disincentives to prevent waste, including cultural attitudes: For instance, the stigma attached to ‘old’ food, and the prestige of consumption.
Economic disincentives to preventing waste, such as poverty and other material pressures: ‘Consumers with less time or spending power who are forced to purchase fast food and other cheaper options are also forced to create more waste and have fewer options for recovering it,’ says Giles.

Industrial pressures

‘In addition to consumer behaviour at the end of the supply chain, the industrial food system that shapes this consumer behaviour also produces a great deal of waste at every other point along the commodity chain,’ says Giles.

This umbrella of issues exists, according to Giles, because of constant commercial pressures that treat food as a commodity, rather than an ‘edible resource’. Some of the industrial pressures here include:

Overproduction of food: In order to maximise sales, stakeholders like suppliers, retailers and restaurants are motivated to increase production.
Manufactured scarcity and disincentives to recovery: ‘To preserve the value of food on the shelves, discarded food must be left in the bin, lest it undermine the entire industry,’ says Giles.
Consumer aesthetic preferences: Food is produced and sold based on ideas of marketing and consumer behaviour, with ‘imperfect’ food becoming waste.
Monopoly power: ‘Smaller suppliers are obliged to produce for the needs of larger entities that dominate the market and can rely on economies of scale,’ Giles says.

Why does hunger exist in a world of abundance?

Food waste and hunger exist are the result of a system that prioritises profit over social and environmental need.

‘The apparatus of machinery and labour devoted to throwing away food when it could be reused or redistributed has to be considered not as natural or inevitable, but as a result of our contemporary economic system and the vested interests that drive it,’ he says.

Food waste and food insecurity: what needs to change?

So, what needs to change to solve the dual problems of food waste and hunger, then? Giles points to five ideas with potential:

Increasing regulations: These regulations would ‘incentivise retailers to simultaneously reduce food waste and alter pricing structures,’ Giles says.
Empowering non-profit organisations to tackle food waste and hunger: ‘Such as food pantries that recover and redistribute food that would otherwise have been wasted,’ says Giles.
Creating greater social support: This might include initiatives like unemployment subsidies to both increase food security and create the necessary buying power to avoid food waste in the long term.
Providing alternative business structures: ‘Such as farmer-consumer cooperatives that cut retailers and suppliers out of the equation,’ says Giles.
Focusing on grassroots projects: Such projects would ideally focus on food cultivation and food sharing and not be driven by profit.

By identifying the systemic problems that tie food waste and hunger together, we may all be able to find a better, less wasteful way forward. It’s just as the UN World Food Program says: ‘Each of us can individually play a part in reducing food loss and food waste, not only for the sake of the food but for the resources that go into it, too.’