Shashi Sharma
Department of Agriculture and Food, Government of Western Australia

It is ironic that while about one billion people go to bed hungry each night, more than 30% of world food production - enough to feed over two billion people - is lost from ‘field’ to ‘fork’. The sheer scale of our globalised and interconnected world facilitates massive frequency of people and goods movement, leaving our food value chain continually exposed to a very high risk of bio-security threats. Insects alone are estimated to consume or damage sufficient food to feed about one billion people every year. Food is being lost during production, harvest, post-harvest storage, processing, transportation, wholesale, retail and consumption phases.
Developed and developing countries face different challenges, as food losses are more upstream in the developing countries and downstream, through food waste, in the developed countries. The quantity of food wasted in the developed countries is mind blowing. Australia alone wastes over four million tonnes of food every year. This figure is dwarfed by food wastages in larger economies like the United States of America and the United Kingdom. The food loss means also a loss of all the resources used to produce this food – the loss of one kilogram of rice is a loss of 2000 litres of water, labour, fertiliser, pesticide, technology and, of course, our time used to produce this rice. Developing countries require effective bio-security strategies to safeguard their food value chain from emerging pest risks. Developed countries will need to continue to maintain and enhance investment in bio-security preparedness, and implement effective strategies to minimise downstream food waste.
Our food security strategies must be based on a long term vision and it is crucial that food is produced without compromising the long term productive capacity of the aquatic and terrestrial resources to achieve sustainable food security for the present and the future generations. There is no room for short term fixes, however smart or clever they may appear. A sustainable food security mission, built on well-developed strategies to produce, protect and provide food, is a necessity. It is a 3P strategy - Produce food sustainably; Protect food from loss in the value chain; and Provide bio-secure food to regions and communities in need - and it is a strategy that needs to be implemented soon to maximise the productivity and security of our food value chain. Let us examine the 3P strategy in more detail.
Produce food sustainably – Food production must not compromise the long term productive capacity of terrestrial and aquatic resources. We need to expand and diversify the portfolio of food crops/resources. We need to increase production of other potentially promising, yet under-utilised plant species. And enhance the understanding of the roles, skills and competencies of billions of microbes that can be found in a gram of arable soil. There well may be species that can be as beneficial as chemical fertilisers in increasing crop productivity and are friendlier to the environment.
Protect food from loss in the value chain – We must secure the global food value chain from loss or waste, and develop more bio-secure food production systems.
Provide bio-secure food to regions and communities in need – Food trade and distribution must not expose the recipient/importing regions and communities to unacceptable bio-security risks. Think ‘glocalisation’ (localisation at a global scale of food trade and distribution). Think of your region and neighbour first. We need to enhance community understanding of the food value chain and the implications of losing or wasting food.
A global bio-security strategy needs to be an integral part of each country’s sustainable food security system to produce, protect and provide food for our present and future generations.