As China grows richer, food waste becomes more serious, drawing foreign media attention

An October 15 article on the editorial website of Bloomberg News of the United States, original title: China needs cleaner plates The next time you dump leftovers into the trash, stop and think about China. From 2010 to 2012, 11.5% of mainland Chinese were malnourished, but Chinese people still waste more food each year than Americans.

Of course, this is not worth making a fuss about. After all, China's population is 4 times that of the United States, and many of them have already joined the middle class. In terms of per capita waste, Americans are still far beyond comparison with Chinese people. But reality will not remain unchanged forever: as China grows richer, the public is, as expected, wasting more food. Anecdotal evidence on this issue is everywhere. One survey showed that food dumped in a university cafeteria in Wuhan accounted for 28.3% of the total food students bought. This situation has become so serious that China launched the “Clean Plate Campaign” last year.

China's waste problem is not only related to affluence. Although China has greatly improved its agricultural infrastructure, in some areas it is still dominated by a smallholder economy based on households, and food waste is widespread. Farming households usually lack proper, clean drying and storage facilities, let alone effective ways to get grain to market before it spoils. Officials from China's State Administration of Grain said last year that grain losses and waste in storage and transportation by national grain enterprises alone exceeded 16 million tons.

The impact of the above waste goes far beyond failing to fill people's stomachs. Some analyses estimate that producing all this wasted food requires about the entire agricultural water consumption of Canada or Australia. And the arable land China uses to grow this wasted grain is roughly equivalent to Mexico's total arable land area. For mainland China, which is facing a severe water shortage, such data should draw the attention of policymakers, environmentalists and consumers, among other groups.

To its credit, Chinese officials seem well aware of the danger of letting this problem swell. This week, Chinese media are carrying out a new campaign against food waste, advancing the “practice economy, oppose waste” campaign launched by President Xi Jinping 18 months ago.