Food Waste with the looming Food Shortage

BøthOfUs AB
3 min readJun 13, 2022

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Image credit — https://unsplash.com/@jo_lanta

One of the key focus areas for BøthOfUs has always been reducing food waste and working to reduce food scarcity across the world. Perhaps this comes from our experience in places where food is rarely wasted and it can be painful to see food thrown away
(Inside secret, during our job interview we take people out for lunch and if we see people waste food, we ask them about it and how they feel, if the reason is not so satisfactory, we usually do not hire people who wasted food)

This is one of the reasons we created our app HomeCook — where users can select the ingredients they have at home and get recommended recipes to cook.

Then imagine our sorrow when we read the recent report from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee that food was left rotting in fields, healthy animals were culled and crops left unplanted for fear of further waste.

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

To add fuel to the fire, there is increasing discussion of how the war in Ukraine will likely lead to global food shortages. The war is already causing issues with a shortage of feed for some livestock.

What is causing these issues? The report outlines a clear lack of workers caused in large part by Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Despite the huge vacancy in the industry of an estimated 500,000 roles, only 11,000 visas were made available, with less than 2,200 applicants.

Photo by Ernie Journeys on Unsplash

So what can be done about this?

We have begun brainstorming what can be done to alleviate this issue:

  • Could we create a Job seeking/networking tool for workers and farmers to connect to speed up recruitment?
  • Could an informational tool to help farmers & workers follow the recruitment and visa guidelines help both sides?
  • Could we leverage the power of communities to create impact and change?

We would love to hear what solutions you would approach this issue with, if this is an area you are passionate about we’d love to discuss it!

We’d love to have a chat! Book a 30 min free call — https://calendly.com/joel_bothofus/intro

Kay Nag — Co-Founder

Joel Yeap — UK Director & English speaking countries

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-yeap-6138b8192/

Marina — Spanish speaking countries

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marinardz/

*********Thank you*********

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BøthOfUs AB

Working on UN SDG goals and helping companies working on UN SDG goals with tech and design.