Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Australia, Jul 6 2010 (IPS) – Devina Celeste, 50, waits in a queue of about 40 people at the neighbourhood centre in the Australian inner-city suburb of Newtown for the only hot meal she will get on this cold winter night.
Ronni Kahn of OzHarvest, one of the many groups helping the hungry, says there is too much wasted food in Australia. Credit: Neena Bhandari/IPS
The queue, 40 percent of which is made up of teenagers and students, is growing. Many have formed strong bonds of friendship from this only-meal-a-day they have on weekdays.
A brief cheer erupts as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) Food for Life van arrives. Chris Smith, an information technology analyst and volunteer driver, is quick to lay the stall and start serving meals on biodegradable plates.
This is my only nutritive meal. Almost 50 percent of my earnings go in rent and the rest in bills and the basics , Celeste, a massage therapist, says as she relishes the hot Khichadi made of lentil, rice and vegetables and the semolina dessert.
She is among a growing number of working poor in Australia who are unable to earn enough to support themselves.
They are finding it hard to fight off hunger in this developed country, where millions of tonnes of food are wasted and end up in landfill sites. Every year, Australians throw out three million tonnes of food worth 5.2 billion Australian dollars (4.4 billion U.S dollars).
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Yet poverty causes 60,000 low-income families to go without at least one meal every day, and two million people rely on food relief at some point every year, says a November 2009 report by an independent think tank called The Australia Institute.
Some civil society and volunteer groups are taking action, collecting surplus food to feed the needy.
OzHarvest is one such charity that collects unwanted food from restaurants, food outlets and corporate kitchens to feed needy communities. Its founder and director, Ronni Kahn, recalls having been appalled to see good food going to waste while working as an events organiser.
In our highly consumerist society, it seemed if I could rescue good food and deliver it to people in need, I could make a real difference. Donors love to give us food because they have put love and energy, and food has fuel and cost embedded (in it), Kahn told IPS. For the recipients, they get variety, quality and nutritional food, which otherwise they couldn t afford. And as food is about sharing and caring, there is dignity in receiving food, and welfare agencies who get food from us can save money for other programmes.
In November 2004, Oz Harvest picked and delivered for free an equivalent of 13,000 meals to eight charities. In May 2010, it delivered 127,000 meals to over 200 different agencies in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.
Elsie s Refuge for Women and Children, which houses eight families with 19 children who have been victims of domestic violence, meets much of its food requirements from OzHarvest deliveries.
A resident at the refuge, 19-year-old Tamara Waidig, told IPS that she would be unable to feed herself and her five-month-old baby if it were not for OzHarvest s weekly supply of fruits, vegetables, bread rolls and meat. Five years ago there wasn t an awareness of food waste, and a sector like this didn t even exist, but now there is a greater awareness about food waste, says Kahn. For its part, Food Bank Australia, formed 18 years ago by people in the food industry, has warehousing facilities to boot. In 2008-09, Food Bank provided 17.25 million kilogrammes of food to 2200 welfare agencies, much of it from retailers, manufacturers, and donated by farms. Since the global financial crisis, the demand has increased and there has been a significant shift in the demographic (trend) of people seeking food assistance, Food Bank Australia chief executive officer John Webster said in an interview. With prices of milk, fruit, vegetables and meat spiralling, we see more families struggling to provide enough nutritious food. In the state of Victoria, 20 tonnes of food go to landfills every 15 minutes even as an estimated one in 10 people can t afford enough food, are malnourished, or suffer anxiety over getting access to food, said Marcus Godinho, chief executive officer of the Melbourne-based FareShare.
Godinho says FareShare gets regular supplies from supermarkets and large multinationals, and provides 45,000 cooked meals a month and twice that quantity of food picked up from various sources.
Another Melbourne-based charity, Second Bite, focuses on surplus fresh foods. The cost of nutritious food is rising and that of fatty, higher sugar and salt food is decreasing. This is having a significant impact on health, says Second Bite spokesman Russell Shields. Seventy percent of the 702 tonnes of food Second Bite provided in 2009 was made up of fruits and vegetables, he adds.
Given that up to 50 percent of food is lost from the field to the fork, SecondBite is calling for an Australian policy that enables a safe, sustainable and nutritious food supply to all.
Meantime, other groups focus on particular sectors of the population, such as the elderly. Those working with Meals on Wheels, which provides cooked meals at a nominal cost to the old and disadvantaged, say food is an excellent method of socially engaging old, ill and isolated people.
We offer more than just a meal as our volunteers provide daily social interaction to frail older people and younger people with disabilities, says Les Macdonald of New South Wales Meals and Wheels, 85 percent of whose volunteers are over 60 years old.