How To Stop Food Wastage In Nigeria, The Causes And All You Must Know

Stopping food wastage in Nigeria is a recurring task for everyone. The figures are alarming if you look at it. Every year, 1.3 billion tons of food gets wasted.  This amount accounts for 33 percent of the food produced in the world.

The story gets worse when you realize that about 795 million people are starving in the world. This begs the question, why waste food? Someone somewhere  is dying for that same food or lack of it.

In our country, an estimated 12 million people are starving. You and I will agree that this is an underestimation of the number of hungry people in Nigeria. When you take a look at all of these, joining the environmental impact food wastage such as pollution, it is in our best interest and that of the people around especially the starving ones to put a stop to  food wastage.

 

 

WHAT CAUSES FOOD WASTAGE

The bad nature of our storage and transport facilities is the primary cause of food wastage in Nigeria. Most times food gets spoilt before reaching its destination in the cases of perishable food and the inability to  save food longer due to bad storage habits, overcooking and buying more than is needed.

We all can put an end to this

 

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HOW TO STOP FOOD WASTAGE IN NIGERIA

1. Provision Of Adequate Storage And Transport Facilities

The most ideal way of curbing food wastage in Nigeria is to provide and orientate the farmers with the appropriate skills and tools needed to preserve and store food. This will lead to more food being saved during the harvest, which in turn will avoid the excessive wastage that occur during this season. In addition, good transport facilities should be provided to the farmers to boost their cultivation of farm produces and give assurances that their goods can reach their target market without getting bad. The government also has a role to play in this by providing adequate storage facilities such as silos, to enable food to be saved for later usage.

 

2. Buy Only What You Need

It is essential on the part of the consumers to plan themselves, know the quantity of food  needed for use at a particular period and stick to that quantity. This saves the buyer some money and allows others access to the food at a reasonable prices, thereby checking inflation of prices due to shortage.

 

3. Recycle

Everyone talks and shouts recycling of materials but nobody talks about food recycling and reuse in Nigeria. If this is practiced it can go a long way in stopping food wastage. In some households, meals are eaten only once and disposed of. Recycle the food by warming it or better still, give it out to the needy. I can bet that there are millions of people out there are ever ready to eat what you just discarded in the waste bin. An instance of food being reused or recycled is fruit remnant transformed into juice and preserved in the fridge for future use. You can add Ingredients to a food to change its taste into something very enticing. Worse case scenario, the food can be used as manure to grow more food in your garden.

In conclusion, let us realize that this is a collective effort. From the government to the common man, everyone can join hands together to eradicate hunger, poverty and wastage  in Nigeria if not totally, to a larger extent!