Long live food waste
One issue that occupies the minds of environmentalists from across the political spectrum is food waste. Around one-third of all food produced for human consumption is never eaten. To environmentalists, this is astonishing and terrible. But, unfortunately, they are completely wrong. And I say that as a fervent environmentalist. It is actually a world with zero food waste that is a terrible place to be. We absolutely do not want to be that world. The reason is this. Food waste is, in practice, a tremendously important global food insurance policy. In a world of zero food waste, if a natural disaster, such as a flood or drought, hits some of the most productive agricultural regions, both food production and food consumption will fall dramatically. There is no buffer. If production falls, food consumption falls by an equal amount. If a flood, for example, wiped out a quarter of world food production one year, in a world with zero food waste the per person food intake must also fall on ave