GMOs: Responding to the Issue of Food Waste and Loss

Food waste and food loss is a hot topic right now and rightly so.  The United Nations has set a target of halving food loss and waste by 2030. But a new consulting group has found that if current trends continue, food waste will continue to rise, both in terms of volume and in terms of money lost.

Of course, people have different ideas of what food waste is when you mention it to them. For some, it means, throwing away food on your plate after a meal. For parents of picky eaters, it’s throwing away of food that doesn’t look perfect or has gone brown. For others, it’s grocery stores or restaurants throwing away food that they couldn’t sell.  And for farmers, it can mean food lefts in fields that couldn’t be picked, or won’t be sold at market. Whatever your idea of food waste is, GMOs can help!

A new article from Reuters talks about the increasing cost of food waste. A recent article in the Boston Globe highlights what people are doing locally. A column in AgDaily details issue of food loss on farms.  All of these things have one thing in common: using all the tools we have to help combat this issue.

In a new blog post on our Medium page, GMO Answers expert and volunteer Janet Carpenter writes about how GMOs and other technologies can help in the fight against food waste. She writes,

GM crops have already increased yields and reduced the environmental impact of farming, where they have been deployed, especially in developing countries where hunger is more prevalent. However, there is much unrealized potential for available GMO technologies that could be beneficial in countries where they are not currently grown, as well as from technology that is still in development.

GMOs are just one way that we can all help to fight food waste. To learn more about how they can help, read the entire post. And check out GMO Answers to learn all about GMOS, and ask your own questions about GMOs.

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