· Food wastage is also high :
- In the United Kingdom , “a shocking 30-40% of all food is never eaten;”
- In the last decade the amount of food British people threw into the bin went up by 15%;
- Overall, £20 billion (approximately $38 billion US dollars) worth of food is thrown away, every year.
- In the US 40-50% of all food ready for harvest never gets eaten;
- The impacts of this waste is not just financial. Environmentally this leads to:
- Wasteful use of chemicals such as fertilizers and pesticides;
- More fuel used for transportation;
- More rotting food, creating more methane — one of the most harmful greenhouse gases that contributes to climate change.
There are other related causes (also often related to the causes of poverty in various ways), including the following:
- Land rights and ownership
- Diversion of land use to non-productive use
- Increasing emphasis on export-oriented agriculture
- Inefficient agricultural practices
- War
- Famine
- Drought
- Over-fishing
- Poor crop yield
- Lack of democracy and rights
- etc.
• War disrupts agricultural production, government spend the money for buy more weapon than social progam.
• Environmental Overload. Over-consumption by wealthy nations and rapid population growth in poor nations strain natural resources and make it harder for poor people to feed themselves.
Environmental and Economic damage from coffee production
“Coffee drinkers will be astonished to learn that they hold in their hands the fate of farm families, farming communities, and entire ecosystems in coffee-growing regions like Costa Rica,” as Old Dog Documentaries notes. Furthermore:
25 million coffee growers worldwide are paid a mere pittance in the corporate marketplace while bearing the full brunt of global price fluctuations. When prices crash, farmers go hungry and their children are forced to drop out of school. Families are separated, communities disintegrate, and the land is cleared for other crops or other means of livelihood. That clearing of the land disrupts the ecosystem in ways that have deadly consequences for migratory birds in particular and for global ecological balance in general.
Diversion of land use to non-productive use
When precious arable land use is diverted to non-productive, or even destructive use, the overall costs to society can be considerable. Examples of such land use include, but is not limited to the following:
- The tobacco industry
- Tea and Coffee plantations the world over to be sold to the wealthier countries, primarily
- Floriculture to sell flowers in the wealthier countries comes at a high cost to the growers
- Certain dam projects
- Sugar cane growing for sugar exports
- Beef and fast food industries using other people's resources
The tobacco industry
- The land that has been destroyed or degraded to grow tobacco has affects on nearby farms. As forests, for example, are cleared to make way for tobacco plantations, then the soil protection it provides is lost and is more likely to be washed away in heavy rains. This can lead to soil degradation and failing yields.
- A lot of wood is also needed to cure tobacco leaves.
- Tobacco uses up more water, and has more pesticides applied to it, further affecting water supplies. These water supplies are further depleted by the tobacco industry recommending the planting of quick growing, but water-thirsty eucalyptus trees.
- Child labor is often needed in tobacco farms.
- For more detail, refer to Big Business Poor Peoples; The Impact of Transnational Corporations on the World's Poor , by John Madeley, (Zed Books, 1999) ch. 4.