UN: World Wasting Enough Rice To Feed 184M This Year

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Wasting Enough Rice to Feed 184 Million Is Habit Only Rats Love

By Jason Gale and Luzi Ann Javier


Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Inside his northern Philippines granary, Marlon Ventura stirs gray zinc phosphide into a bowl of boiled rice, making a garlicky, toxic meal for rats.

He puts the bowl on a dirt floor dotted with grain spilled from vermin-gnawed sacks. Each year, rats steal or foul almost three-quarters of a metric ton (1,654 pounds) of his rice. The cost -- 12,240 pesos ($250) -- equals 7.8 percent of his farm’s net income.

“I’m frustrated because we’ve not got any support from the government,” says Ventura, 28, who farms with his three brothers and spends 900 pesos a month on rat bait. “When you have very little money, every grain you can save matters.”

The world is wasting enough rice this year to feed 184 million people, about a fifth of those who are undernourished, based on estimates from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome. The amount lost between harvest and consumers globally totals at least 48 million tons, says Concepcion Calpe, a senior economist with the FAO.

Rats aren’t the only species responsible -- humans also play a role. Lulled by low food prices since the 1970s, donor nations and lenders halved aid to agriculture in developing countries, the World Bank says. Corrupt leaders and bureaucrats siphoned off much of what did arrive, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. As a result, grain storage and processing remain primitive in many developing countries, which have the greatest losses and highest rates of hunger.

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