FAO Kenya partners with WHO to build principles of sustainable healthy diets
The Food and Agriculture Organisation and the global health agency have partnered to build principles of sustainable healthy diets to reduce food waste and loss.
Assistant FAO Kenya representative Hamisi Williams said details of the partnership on the FAO website are informed by a study that shows we waste about 20pc of food at the farm level.
"If you do your farming right and use the right procedures, we will avoid the extra 30pc of food that is lost at the post-harvest stage."
Williams added that food waste leads to a loss of up to Sh72bn each season, money that should have been in the farmers' pocket.
The losses can be reduced through policy interventions and specified targeting on reducing hunger and poverty.
"We need to have a sector-specific guide and ask ourselves what wastage is in what sector to know which methodology would be applied," he said.
Williams cited pastoralists and milk producers in Kiambu and Nyandarua counties or farmers in arid and semi-arid areas who plant a lot of vegetables but have little technology on preservation.
In aquaculture, FAO says all projects should be made to include food preservation mechanisms so that highly perishable goods have a long shelf-life.
This will in turn make it possible for the farmers to engage in the export market and have the better bargaining power to negotiate.
On Covid-19, Williams advised that there is a need to develop a guideline to sustain households on how to live healthily and preserve what they have. FAO has released such guidelines outlined on its website.
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, nations are grappling with its economic effects which have led to another shock in terms of food security.
Many vulnerable people are involuntarily forced to stay at home and not work as a result of the health crisis, making it more difficult to make ends meet.
Restrictions on movement as well as social distancing have caused a significant strain on food supply chains at production and distribution points.
"What is needed is an honest dialogue. We have a strategy but we need a central and focused framework to tie players in the chain from the product, movement up to the consumption level," Williams said.
Meanwhile, more farmers should grow legumes to boost food security, researchers have said.
To achieve that goal, for the past three years, the Legume Centre of Excellence for Food and Nutrition Security (LCEFoNS), under Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) has endeavoured to enhance the legume value chain of the country.
The project focuses on different stages along the value chain of legumes; from agricultural production, post-harvest storage and food processing to human consumption and its impact on nutrition and health.
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