The former sub-regional coordinator of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) for Central Africa, Hélder Muteia, revealed that about 1.3 million tons of food is wasted every year throughout the world.
Speaking on Friday, 28 April, in Namaacha, Maputo province, Hélder Muteia said that with one third of the quantities of food that the world wastes every year, it would be possible to feed the 828 million people that suffer hunger in the world.
Hélder Muteia was speaking during the lecture on the theme: Promoting Technology Based Agriculture Towards Zero Hunger: The Contribution of Higher Education Institutions in Mozambique, given on the occasion of the 9th academic year opening ceremony at InSCED Open University.
For Hélder Muteia, who was also Mozambique’s Minister of Agriculture, the level of food waste varies according to the development indices of each group of countries. “In the poorest countries waste happens because there is a lack of infrastructure, crops are poor, transport is done in precarious conditions, subject to rain, high temperatures and then we have rodents and many pests that end up destroying [the crops],” explained the former minister cited by the Mozambique Information Agency (AIM).
In another development, Hélder Muteia said that “already in more developed countries, waste comes at the time of marketing and consumption, motivated by cultural and recreational issues, among other festivals where food is just thrown away. So in poorer countries waste occurs at the beginning of the chain, and in richer countries it occurs at the end of the chain.
The source further said that for Africa, there are more than 278 million people who suffer acute and most humiliating hunger. There are also 2.3 million people who are moderately hungry.
“Many in Mozambique are in that situation. They are in that struggle, in that tangent in which when they get a plate to eat they say thank God,” he said.
