The Need For Nurture: Can We Really Feed the World?

According to consulting firm McKinsey, almost one third of food produced annually goes to waste - and yet food poverty, deprivation and insecurity are a global phenomenon. In 2020, the UN reported that 2.3 billion people - roughly one quarter of the world - lacked adequate access to food. The effects of this are most drastic among children; Action Against Hunger, an international food charity, reports that 45% of deaths among under-fives are linked to undernutrition. Similarly, the data-driven publication Our World in Data shows that 22% of those under five are stunted in growth due to a lack of nutrition. The need for nurture could not be more pressing.

War and natural disaster are the most common causes of malnutrition and food insecurity. Food waste, however, is also a substantial problem. Whether it be at source or at the point of purchase, 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted every year. The reality is we do produce enough food to feed the world. But since so much of this food is wasted, any goal of international food security seems impossible. If we wish to end global hunger - especially among children - then we must ask more serious questions about where our food comes from, how it is produced and transported, how much of it we buy, and even what we buy.

Food waste is not the only obstacle on the road to ending global hunger but it is certainly an area in which we can all do better.

There are, of course, instances when food waste is almost impossible to avoid. It is only natural that food will get damaged in transit, and in our consumercentric world it is impossible for businesses to align supply exactly with demand. Phenomena like lockdown restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic - during which farmers were forced to waste thousands of litres of milk due to the shutdown of the hospitality sector - are also unavoidable. But there are many other areas in which food waste is a preventable outcome. Take India, for example. According to commentator Jeremy Erdman, 30-40% of food in India is wasted due to a lack of cold storage in shops and wholesalers. With subsidisation of or investment in energy or storage units, much of this waste could be avoidable. Can we eliminate it completely? Of course not. But we can, and should, be doing more.

Tackling food waste is a daunting task. But we can consider two great examples of zero-waste initiatives, both internationally and locally, at UCL. These initiatives should act as a ray of hope in an otherwise sea of darkness.

In 2022, the Washington Post reported that Japan throws out around 40kg of food per person every year. The country is hoping to cut this number in half by 2030. Japanese companies are at the cutting-edge of new technologies and initiatives, recycling food waste into entirely different products. In Takachiho, a town of 12,000 people, an open-air train has been built which provides breath-taking views of the local countryside, whilst operating on fuel which is entirely sustainable. It’s made up of wasted lard and cooking oil that would have otherwise ended up as waste.

Meanwhile, Fabula - a Tokyobased start-up - is using leftovers to produce concrete. Concrete is paramount in construction, but its primary component, cement, is responsible for up to 8% of global carbon emissions, according to the think-tank Chatham House. By repurposing leftovers - including everything from orange peels to coffee - Fabula can produce an alternative form of cement, and a more sustainable form of concrete that has lower carbon emissions.

Locally at UCL, there are also many initiatives which aim to reduce food waste. Zero Food Waste UCL is a student-led initiative which collects food waste, often leftover sandwiches from student cafes, and redistributes it amongst the community. Again, this initiative is a win-win, reducing waste whilst also redistributing food to those in need. Waste from kitchens and catering facilities across UCL that isn’t distributed is separated from other rubbish and incinerated - repurposing the waste into electricity and preventing it from rotting in landfill.

Similar redistribution schemes operate across the country, especially in soup kitchens. Most weeks I volunteer at St John the Evangelist, a church in Finsbury Park, where I help run a soup kitchen and food bank. In the grand scheme of things, we are a small operation. But we still play a big part in combating food poverty in the local community. Every Tuesday and Sunday our merry group of volunteers chop and prepare fresh produce that has been donated by local grocers, all of which has gone unsold or is damaged and would otherwise have been discarded. Although this can lead to some inconsistency in what we produce - we often receive eclectic combinations of items, leading to somewhat ‘creative’ recipes - this is yet another great example of repurposing perfectly good food so that it is accessible for those who need it most. The joy that this brings to those who use our service is hard to describe; it is so lovely to know that you have made a positive difference, both for the individual who would have otherwise gone hungry and in saving good quality food that would have otherwise gone to waste.

Food waste will never be eradicated, nor is it the only factor behind food poverty and insecurity. But by taking initiative at a variety of levels - local, national, and global - individuals have the power to make a difference. By asking questions about what we produce, how we produce it, how it is transported, how much of it we buy and whether we need to buy it at all, we can begin to eradicate food waste.

Eliminating world hunger has historically been viewed as idealistic. But, in a world where we produce enough food to feed one and a half times the global population, it is a realistic one. Tackling unnecessary food waste is a step in the right direction - all of us can and must do more if we hope to feed the world.

Written by Dominic Butler Artwork

Time has experienced three major transformations over the last 150 years. The first occurred in the natural sciences whereby, thanks to Einstein’s theory of relativity, time was no longer taken as a constant; time became relative. The second occurred in the human sciences whereby new disciplines – anthropology, sociology, and psychology – began to draw attention to how individuals experience time; a new phenomenology of time had appeared. The third, and most recent, occurred in the realms of politics and society: the emergence of neoliberal time. This latter form owes a lot to the former two; indeed, it could not have emerged without them. Nonetheless it has proven unique in reshaping the dynamics of society through accelerating everyday life to produce a fast-paced world whereby new expectations and perceptions of time have emerged.

In its crudest form, neoliberalism can be understood as a certain way of organising society based on the elevation of market principles to all domains of life. Market ideals become embedded across society, with notions of competition and efficiency influencing how we act and interact with others. This, according to some, is the story of how politics has evolved across the world since the 1970s. Of course, not all countries got a say in this story; whilst some chose to implement neoliberal reforms, many were coerced. Nonetheless, neoliberalism spread quickly and opened up the world like never before.

Across a similar timeline, the world experienced a series of revolutions in technology, with developments in transportation, computation, and communication fundamentally changing how we live. New technologies emerged that would flatten spatial and temporal barriers, democratise information, and facilitate new versions of reality. To be sure, technological innovation is not a new phenomenon; our modernity, for example, is often traced back to the fifteenth century with the invention of the printing press. Nonetheless, the rate of innovation has become near exponential over the last fifty years and it is difficult to find a historical precedent for the current moment. The emergence and growth of the internet – the so-called ‘network of networks’ – typifies such developments, although other technologies have also played their part. So too has neoliberalism.

It is difficult to separate the developments in technology from the dynamics of neoliberalism. These two phenomena are deeply intertwined and have operated in tandem to accelerate life through their unifying logic of progress. In physics, acceleration is calculated by the change in velocity over the change in time; the acceleration of life is thus dependent on temporal alterations. This is why acceleration has been so pronounced in neoliberal time: through combining market logics with technological innovation, processes become much quicker, and with that, expectations change; life becomes immediate.

Fifty years ago, looking up information, communicating from various locations in the world, or buying food required a certain investment: one’s time. Now, however, these processes are instantaneous. Information is found at the click of a button, communication is simplified by digitised media and the universalisation of time (network time), and food can be delivered in minutes thanks to new delivery systems. Time need not be invested in these processes anymore; it can be spent elsewhere.

Why, then, do we feel as busy as ever? The answer is phenomenological: our perceptions and experiences of time have been distorted, with neoliberal time producing new normative expectations about how long things take. Our modern cultures – especially in the West – have come to be defined by urgency and, in turn, impatience. We constantly find ourselves frustrated at things that take too long: a delayed package, a queue at the self-checkouts, or a buffering webpage. We constantly look for shortcuts too, and often give up if things get too time consuming.

Not all things necessarily fit into this new formulation though; many things still require an investment of time. For one, it takes years to perfect a martial art with several setbacks along the way. Raising a child takes time too – eighteen years in most cultures – and there are seldom shortcuts to this process. Indeed, the process of child-rearing is where we derive the word ‘nurture’ from, with the Latin verb nutrire (to nourish) often used in relation to upbringing. Embedded within the concept of nurture, therefore, is a certain temporality: to nurture is to follow a process of development, a series of acts that occur over time, and that take time.

Nurturing, then, operates against the immediacy of neoliberal time, but this need not be problematic. On the contrary, acts of nurturing can help us reflect on the realities of our time, teaching us to be more patient in a world where impatience has become the norm. This is important; as Hegel once noted, “impatience asks for the impossible, wanting to reach the goal without the means of getting there”. Nurturing helps to overcome this by returning the process of taking time to achieve a certain end. It encourages us to relearn patience, to invest time, and to nurture the things that matter most, whatever they may be.

To be sure, this is not a call to return to a previous time; no, we should still embrace the marvels of our modernity. Yet we must also embrace the temporality of nurturing, which helps remind us that not all things are immediate. Take this article as an example. Thanks to new technology, I can research and write as quickly as ever, however, the actual process of writing takes time and should not be rushed. A balance must therefore be struck between saving time and taking time, between urgency and nurture.

For decades nurture has been placed in a binary with nature. Yet as recent developments in epigenetics have shown, this biological binary is a misnomer; the picture is much more complex. Perhaps, then, we should reorient the concept of nurture toward a more social and temporal understanding, placing it in relation to neoliberal time as a contrast to the urgency of modern life. In doing so, we may remind ourselves that sometimes, patience is needed; sometimes, things need to be nurtured.