Packaging Solutions for Developing Countries

 FEEDING the world's population is one of the greatest challenges of our time. Almost a billion people are currently suffering from starvation. A further billion people have insufficient food supplies. In 1996, the World Food Summit set a target to halve the number of starving people by 2015. A further aim was to eradicate hunger by 2025.
These targets pose a challenge, even though in many of the countries concerned sufficient food would be available. This is because, on average, a third of the produce is lost on its way from the field to the plate. In some emerging countries, such as India, as much as three quarters of produced foodstuffs never reach the consumer. One of the reasons for this is insufficient packaging, which means that products such as wheat, corn or rice are not adequately protected from the weather or from pests.
 The amount of waste illustrates the importance of packaging technology. Without packaging, many foodstuffs perish more quickly and cannot be stored and shipped over long distances. Most everyday food that enriches our diet, such as dairy products, vegetables and fruit, would not be available in the quantities and quality we are accustomed to. In regions of high humidity, even a simple ingredient like salt needs adequate packaging to remain usable. We would also see much less variety on our dining tables, not to mention a difference in quality.

Inefficient use of resources
Resources are wasted that are essential for production because so much harvested food is lost. These are primarily arable land, energy and water. The production of one kilogram of corn requires 450 litres of water and even more for a kilo of soya or of rice, which requires 2,300 litres and 3,000 litres, respectively. It takes no less than 4,500 litres of water to produce a kilo of beef.
Agriculture demand for water is set to rise by 30% over the next 20 years and expected to double by 2050, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Yet in some regions not even a quarter of the harvest actually reaches the consumer. In these same regions, water may already be an extremely precious resource and so using it to produce food that is then wasted – an inefficient and expensive waste of resource.

Packaging in Developing Countries
An FAO-sponsored assessment of packaging and packaging technologies in developing countries set against the backdrop of the global food loss challenge suggests that locally designed packaging machines and materials suited to local needs and conditions could help propel packaging industry development. Whilst this strategy is in its infancy, these countries will need to rely on second-hand equipment given the prohibitive cost of new ones, the researchers said at the Save Food conference in Düsseldorf.
The study, " Investing into Appropriate Packaging Technology in Developing Countries" as well as another on global food waste, was presented at SAVE FOOD, a joint initiative of the FAO and Messe Düsseldorf GmbH. The international congress on 16 and 17 May 2011 focused on the options open to policy-makers and solution approaches along the food value chain, the role that packaging can play in avoiding these losses.
Dr Nerlita M. Manalili, an advisor to the FAO and lead author of the study, said the six-month assessment was "done in consideration of the developing countries' role as major supplier to the global food system and consequently as contributor to the search for global food loss solutions."
Developing countries have very limited packaging solutions to meet international market requirements, and the size of the domestic pAdidas