Bo­bie-Lee Dixon

In T&T, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100,000 peo­ple or 7.4 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion is un­der­nour­ished.

These fig­ures were giv­en by UN Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion (FAO) rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dr Lystra Fletch­er-Paul at the Ju­ly 21 launch of Nour­ish TT, an NGO cre­at­ed to elim­i­nate food waste and help those in need.

Food se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Fletch­er-Paul said Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean wastes 78 mil­lion tonnes of food an­nu­al­ly; this amounts to six per cent of the food pro­duced glob­al­ly. She al­so re­mind­ed the gath­er­ing that T&T was re­cent­ly ranked among the world's high­est pro­duc­ers of sol­id waste.

"The FAO es­ti­mates that in T&T if we were to re­duce the food loss­es at the re­tail lev­el, we would have enough food to re­duce, by 50 per cent, the un­der­nour­ished peo­ple in the coun­try. By ex­ten­sion, if we re­duce loss­es and waste from all oth­er sources, we would have enough food to feed all the un­der­nour­ished peo­ple in this coun­try and so make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to­wards elim­i­nat­ing hunger and food in­se­cu­ri­ty," said Fletch­er-Paul.

This is where an NGO like Nour­ish TT comes in.

Nour­ish TT was set up just over a year ago by for­mer banker Krista San­tos. San­tos said she's al­ways been care­ful about not wast­ing food and the cat­a­lyst for start­ing Nour­ish TT was when she ob­served se­ri­ous food wastage by a lo­cal re­tail­er. She was both­ered by what she be­lieved was "throw­ing away per­fect­ly good food".

"We found­ed Nour­ish TT be­cause we be­lieve there are two in­ter­linked prob­lems in this coun­try–hunger and food waste," San­tos said. "By ad­dress­ing one, we can al­le­vi­ate the oth­er."

She then worked on the Nour­ish TT pitch and suc­cess­ful­ly pre­sent­ed it to some of the peo­ple who now make up the NGO's eight-mem­ber board.

Nour­ish TT's work takes place on the com­pa­ny's web­site which has a pri­vate por­tal through which food donors and char­i­ty part­ners can se­cure­ly log in to the sys­tem.

Re­tail­ers, food dis­trib­u­tors and man­u­fac­tur­ers post avail­able food to the por­tal, not­ing the "best be­fore" date of each prod­uct. Do­na­tions are au­to­mat­i­cal­ly shared with all Nour­ish TT's part­ner char­i­ties. How­ev­er, the donor names are not re­vealed to char­i­ties, and food donors can­not view each oth­er's do­na­tions.

Or­ders are se­cured by char­i­ties or­der­ing on the por­tal on a first-come, first-served ba­sis, and once the char­i­ties have or­dered what they need, do­na­tions are col­lect­ed by Nour­ish and de­liv­ered to the char­i­ties.

In a video shown at the launch, Massy Stores CEO Derek Win­ford said, "We're al­ways look­ing for ways to cut down food waste, so when Nour­ish ap­proached us, we were in­trigued to learn more.

"Since we've been in­volved, we re­alised that the sys­tem does work and we can elim­i­nate waste in our stores. There's no rea­son why, in time, it can't be done across oth­er sec­tors of the food in­dus­try," Win­ford said.

Massy Stores back­store su­per­vi­sor Giselle Jef­frey said the su­per­mar­ket usu­al­ly gives food to char­i­ties in their lo­cale, but the Nour­ish TT web­site now en­ables a wider dis­tri­b­u­tion for food.

"They [Nour­ish TT] pro­vide a new out­let for us to give food to char­i­ties, not just near­by but all across the coun­try. And what's great about it is that it's done be­hind a screen on the shop floor."

Win­ford added, "We're very proud to be in­volved and pi­o­neer­ing the dri­ve to re­duce food waste."

The Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty is one of the char­i­ties to ben­e­fit from Nour­ish.

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Co-founder Rhon­da Main­got said, "We feed poor peo­ple all day, every day. In many of our min­istries, we have 24/7 homes and al­so like in Dun­can Street (Dun­can Street Car­ing Cen­tre/Ave Maria Car­ing Cen­tre), we feed 150 peo­ple every day–break­fast and lunch. ... So Nour­ish com­ing in at this time, es­pe­cial­ly at this time of re­ces­sion, has re­al­ly been a tremen­dous help to us."

Main­got al­so praised the con­ve­nience of the dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem set up by Nour­ish.

"I re­mem­ber in the old days when restau­rants want­ed to give us the food that was left over, we'd have to go there in the mid­dle of the night but through tech­nol­o­gy, it's so amaz­ing. Every­thing is on the web­site, we go in, see what they have to of­fer, make arrange­ments and the food is de­liv­ered. It's ab­solute­ly amaz­ing. Thank God for Nour­ish."

San­tos told the T&T Guardian that so far Nour­ish TT has nev­er re­ceived food that can­not be eat­en. The stuff is al­ways in date and fit for con­sump­tion. Nour­ish dis­trib­utes ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,500 meals per week.

Fletch­er-Paul said there is too much food avail­able for peo­ple to still be hun­gry or un­der­nour­ished in T&T.

She point­ed to the high na­tion­al pover­ty lev­el of 28.8 per cent and ex­pressed the fear that it can even get high­er as more peo­ple are put on the bread­line dur­ing this eco­nom­ic down­turn.

THe UN rep­re­sen­ta­tive com­mend­ed the team be­hind Nour­ish TT for its dri­ve and vi­sion. She said such or­gan­i­sa­tions are im­por­tant to sus­tain­ing food se­cu­ri­ty.

"Through their in­no­v­a­tive use of tech­nol­o­gy and in part­ner­ship with the pri­vate sec­tor and civ­il so­ci­ety, they are al­ready mak­ing an im­pact by re­duc­ing hunger and un­der­nour­ish­ment in this coun­try.

"They are al­so con­tribut­ing to UN Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals which speak to health and well be­ing by pro­vid­ing healthy, nu­tri­tious food to peo­ple who may not nor­mal­ly have a meal for the day."

For more in­for­ma­tion vis­it www.nour­ishtt.com

SIDE­BAR

Food waste and pover­ty in the Caribbean

Be­tween 2014 and 2016, the num­ber of un­der­nour­ished peo­ple in the Caribbean was es­ti­mat­ed to be about 7.5 mil­lion.

T&T is one of four coun­tries in the re­gion where less than 10 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion is un­der­nour­ished. The oth­ers are Do­mini­ca, Ba­hamas, Be­lize and Ja­maica. With un­der­nour­ish­ment lev­els of be­low five per cent, Bar­ba­dos, Guyana and St Vin­cent have suc­cess­ful­ly met the two main glob­al hunger tar­gets set by the World Food Sum­mit 1996 and the Millinieum De­vel­op­ment Goals in 2000.

Un­sur­pris­ing­ly, the Caribbean na­tion with the high­est lev­el of un­der­nour­ish­ment is Haiti with 53.4 per cent.

Lystra Fletch­er-Paul said over­con­sump­tion is al­so a con­trib­u­tor to food wastage.

She said it is es­ti­mat­ed that glob­al­ly 1.3 bil­lion tonnes or rough­ly a third of the food pro­duced for hu­man con­sump­tion is ei­ther lost or wast­ed an­nu­al­ly.

"Loss­es may oc­cur all along the val­ue chain dur­ing pro­duc­tion, har­vest­ing, han­dling, stor­age and pro­cess­ing, while food wastage oc­curs when we throw away food that is still ed­i­ble at whole­sale and re­tail sales, in pre­pared food ser­vices and at the con­sumer lev­el."

The food se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert said it is al­so es­ti­mat­ed that 28 per cent of food loss­es in the re­gion oc­curs in the con­sumer seg­ment; 28 per cent in the pro­duc­tion seg­ment; 17 per cent in mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion; 22 per cent in han­dling and stor­age and six per cent dur­ing pro­cess­ing. This, she says, rep­re­sents a tremen­dous loss of time, labour, cap­i­tal, en­er­gy and in­come.