Climate Change, Post-harvest Losses and Food Wastage Mark World Food Day Celebrations
By Marko Phiri
As the World Food Day was marked on October 16, 2023, millions worldwide were starving and global food wastage is yet to ease.
According to agencies, food worth billions of dollars goes to waste annually due to poor post-harvest storage and food that has made it to the table but is later dumped as leftovers.
Rich countries, the world’s major food producers, have been identified as culprits as the Global South struggles with food insecurity. The World Food Programme (WFP) says hundreds of millions of people in developing countries require food assistance despite evidence that global food production remains enough to address such humanitarian emergencies.
Weeds are a significant challenge in agriculture, landscaping, and natural resource management. They compete with crops for nutrients, water, and sunlight, reducing yields and overall productivity. To combat these unwanted plants, herbicides are a common and effective tool. However, selecting the right herbicide for a particular situation is crucial for successful weed control. Various factors come into play when choosing the most suitable herbicide, and understanding these factors is essential for effective and responsible herbicide use.
Yields in high value cash & export crops such as coffee, potatoes, avocados, pawpaws, watermelons, oranges, cucumber, passion fruit, etc, hugely depend on the pollination activities carried out by bees, butterflies, birds & other pollinators. Pollinators are essential to the production of many of the micronutrient rich fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and oils we eat. In fact, close to 75 percent of the world’s crops producing fruits and seeds for human consumption depend, at least in part, on pollinators for sustained production, yield and quality. The diversity of food available is largely owed to bees and other pollinators. But alarmingly, in a number of regions, pollination services are showing declining trends.
Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges of our time, and its impacts are being felt across the globe. As a climatesensitive sector, agriculture is particularly vulnerable to the changing climate. Wheat, one of the world’s most important staple crops, faces significant challenges in the post-harvest phase as a result of climate change.