COMBATING FOOD WASTE

Some elements of agritech provide ways to combat the scourge of food waste. Agrosustain (Canton of Vaud) is de-veloping a completely new kind of product that inhibits the growth of several kinds of pathogenic fungi and in some cases kills them – organically. This natural method, which is set to enter commercial production this year, is a way of limiting food waste. Supermarket retailers are interested in Agrosustain’s claims that its product can extend the shelf life of fruit and vegetables by around a week (see page 81). Similarly, Ozone.ch, based in Le Locle (Canton of Neuchâ-tel), has developed a process that extends the sell-by date of fruit stock, thereby reducing spoilage rates.

Digital apps are another way to tackle the problem. In Switzerland, Too Good To Go connects retailers with consumers, offering unsold stock at reduced prices before it spoils. By the end of 2020, more than a million Swiss consumers had downloaded the app, with nearly 3,500 businesses (including supermarkets, hotels and bakeries) signing up.

The Bern-based company Äss-Bar has come up with the same idea, offering bakery products that haven’t sold by closing time at knockdown prices, generally the day after baking. There are now Äss-Bars in St Gallen, Winterthur, Zurich, Lucerne, Basel, Bern, Biel/Bienne, Lausanne and Fribourg, selling their wares under the slogan «Freshly made yesterday». The UglyFruits initiative markets unsold fruit and vegetables in optimised, plastic-free packaging. It also promotes the idea of the short supply circuit, being the only intermediary between producers and consumers, with customers managing their one-off or regular weekly orders online. More and more initiatives of this kind are springing up, creating a commercial outlet for the fruit that the supermarkets don’t want to sell.

Big data can also be a very useful tool in combating food waste. Making more and better use of statistical data is a way of raising awareness of this problem among retailers, farmers and consumers and also of improving food production planning.

Recently, other more original global initiatives have been launched. One of these is the Falling Fruit app, which identifies fruit trees in towns and cities, enabling residents to go and pick them for free when the time is ripe, preventing the fruit from ending up rotting on the pavement.

Facts and figures

According to a recent study by WWF, out of 100 potatoes harvested in Switzerland, only 34 are actually consumed. Despite being perfectly edible, the other 66 are removed because they do not meet aesthetic or quality criteria. This waste is not specific to agriculture. It exists at every level of the production and consumption chain: cultivation, processing, sale and end consumption. According to figures produced in 2019 by the Federal Office for the Environment, no fewer than 2.8 million tonnes of food are wasted every year in Switzerland.

This equates to 330 kilos per person per year, or 37% of agricultural production, accounting for roughly a quarter of the greenhouse gases produced by Switzerland’s food production industry.