Hunger is an issue awash in tragic data: nearly a billion people on this planet still live in the shadow of hunger, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. And children are the most visible victims of malnutrition, which caused at least 50 per cent of 10 million child deaths each year.
Now, add another data-point to the injustice that is starvation: there is enough food to feed everyone on the planet, and then some. The trouble is keeping it out of the bin.
A shocking new study reveals that up to 50 per cent of the world's produced food is never eaten. The study, by the UK's Institution of Mechanical Engineers, cites poor practices in harvesting, storage and transportation, and market and consumer wastage as key reasons why as much as 2 billion tonnes of perfectly good calories never reach a human stomach.
The trend is particularly worrying given the steady increase in the world's population, the migration of farmers to urban centres and the lack of investment in agriculture in poverty-stricken nations.
Ending global hunger may be less about growing food than getting it to people's plates. The first piece in solving that puzzle is keeping life-sustaining nutrition from ending up in the rubbish.