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Discarded food and resource depletion

Nature Food volume 1, pages 660–662 (2020)Cite this article

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Food systems are driven by incentives that often lead to food being discarded before entering the market and to the degradation of natural resources. Vegetable production in the water-scarce province of Almería, Spain, illustrates this and highlights the need for policies ensuring ethical and environmental sustainability standards.

Over one-third of the food produced globally is not consumed1, of which approximately 14% corresponds to post-harvest loss2. In most high-income countries, the primary reason for this is to control prices that, due to an excess of produce in the market, may fall below production costs3. Furthermore, food being discarded is often produced unsustainably and contributes to the depletion of natural resources. Yet, some countries and supranational administrative units like the European Union (EU) offer subsidies to compensate farmers for losses associated with price fluctuations, often strengthening already extremely competitive sectors4.

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Fig. 1: Recent trends in Almería’s tomato production.
Fig. 2: Environmental impact associated with vegetables discarded in Andalusia in 2018 and 2019.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are funded by the European Research Council grant agreement no. 647038 (BIODESERT). F.T.M. acknowledges support from Generalitat Valenciana (CIDEGENT/2018/041).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto Multidisciplinar para el Estudio del Medio “Ramón Margalef”, Universidad de Alicante, San Vicente del Raspeig, Alicante, Spain

    Jaime Martínez-Valderrama, Emilio Guirado & Fernando T. Maestre

  2. Departamento de Ecología, Universidad de Alicante, San Vicente del Raspeig, Alicante, Spain

    Fernando T. Maestre

Authors
  1. Jaime Martínez-Valderrama
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  3. Fernando T. Maestre
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Correspondence to Jaime Martínez-Valderrama.

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Martínez-Valderrama, J., Guirado, E. & Maestre, F.T. Discarded food and resource depletion. Nat Food 1, 660–662 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-020-00186-5

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