The food waste is a plague. According to ONU, about one third of the food produced on a global scale every year is wasted: it is a quantity amounting to around 1.3 billion tons of food. This happens while about 800 million people are starving.
Could we avoid this waste? In a good percentage yes, thanks to the optimized cold: this is highlighted by a study carried out by a team of researchers of the University of Michigan. According to the conclusions they have reached, we might avoid wasting about 620 million tons of food by means of fully refrigerated food provisioning chains worldwide.
Not only: an optimal cold chain would allow notably decreasing climate-altering emissions. Food wastes produce about 8% of total greenhouse gas emissions of anthropic origin. A scarce infrastructure of the cold chain may be responsible for 1.8 GtCO2 equivalent yearly. Well, by means of the cold chain, we could decrease by 41% on a global scale the greenhouse gas emissions connected with food wastes that share in the climate warming.
Less waste, fewer emissions: who would benefit more
The Sub-Saharan Africa and South and South-East Asia have the biggest potential of reduction of both food losses and of the relative emissions through a bigger implementation of the cold chain, it is the conclusion of the study carried out by the researchers of the United States University.
In a scenario of optimized refrigeration, the South and Southeast Asia might score a 45% reduction of food losses and a 54% decrease of the associated emissions. The study shows, in particular, that the Sub-Saharan Africa offers enormous opportunities for both the reduction of food losses (47%) and of emissions (66%) under optimized refrigeration conditions.
The scientists of the University of Michigan estimate that the use of cold chains fully optimized might allow saving over 100 million tons of fruit and vegetable losses in the South and Southeast Asia and more than 700 million tons of CO2 equivalent in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The benefits of “farm to fork” management
Supported by the National Science Foundation of the United States and by Carrier and published on the scientific review Environmental Research Letters, the study by the team of the United States University focused on the food losses in the phases that follow the picking, until the retail sale of the food provisioning chain; it has not faced the losses in companies or on a domestic scale.
It has taken the greenhouse gases released during the food production into account. It has not included the emissions linked with the refrigeration or with other operations of the provisioning chain and it has not considered the emissions deriving from food wastes in landfills.
Given this, it has surveyed a significant aspect: the greatest opportunity to reduce food wastes in the least industrialized economies is the provisioning chain between the farm and the consumer. Nevertheless, in North America, Europe and in other more industrialized regions, the vast majority of food losses occurs in families, then the improvements of the cold chain would not have a significant impact on total food losses.
Unlike previous studies about this topic, researchers have compared the advantages of globalized and technologically advanced food provisioning chains with those of “farm to fork” food systems. They have concluded that hyper-localized food systems have implied lower food losses than global and optimized refrigerated provisioning chains.
They have noticed, in fact, that under several situations, the development of food provisioning chains devised “farm to fork”, that is to say more localized and less industrialized, might generate food savings comparable to optimized cold chains.
Researchers underline that the effective quantity of reduction of greenhouse gas emissions will depend on the efficiency of cold chain technologies and on the intensity of carbon of local electric grids, since the climatic emissions associated to the refrigeration may be significant.
The effects of tailored refrigeration on meat
Moreover, the study has pointed out the importance of food losses connected with meat. While the quantity of fruit and vegetable losses is much higher, in terms of weight, all over the world, the climate-related emissions associated to meat losses are constantly bigger than those associated to any other kind of food, mainly owing to the high intensity of greenhouse gases in the meat production.
They have surveyed that meat represents over 50% of greenhouse gas emissions linked with food losses, even if it makes up less than 10% of global food losses in weight. According to the study, an optimized meat refrigeration might imply the elimination of over 43% of the emissions associated to the loss of meat.
