Peru piles high tonnes of rotting food as its tax laws contribute to chronic waste [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

Peru piles high tonnes of rotting food as its tax laws contribute to chronic waste

Campaigners want end to laws that make donating food more costly than destroying it in country with huge harvests but high infant malnutrition

Dan Collyns
@yachay_dc
Wednesday 30 September 2015 10.13 EDT

From asparagus filling supermarket shelves in the UK to avocados entering the potentially huge Chinese market, Peru’s agribusiness shipments are booming at a time of declining demand for its metals exports, which powered a decade of record-high growth.

The sector is expected to grow by 17% this year and be worth $7bn by the end of 2016, according to the country’s agriculture minister, Juan Manuel Benites. But agribusiness is both a victim of and culprit in the global food waste problem, which results in 1.3bn tonnes of food – about a third of what is produced – being thrown away.

Reducing food waste is part of the new global development agenda, that was adopted by world leaders at the summit in New York at the end of September. The sustainable development goals, which define development priorities for the next 15 years, include a target on food waste: “By 2030 halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer level, and reduce food losses along production and supply chains including post-harvest losses.”

Campaigners say that in Peru, in addition to the millions of tonnes of fruit and vegetables dumped because they do not meet cosmetic standards set by supermarkets in the UK, the rest of Europe, and the US, thousands more tonnes are destroyed or left to rot by Peru’s own supermarkets due to tax regulations.

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/sep/30/peru-piles-high-tonnes-of-rotting-food-as-tax-laws-contribute-to-chronic-waste