Israeli technologies could boost SA agriculture

While the global agriculture sector must produce significantly more food and fibre for the world’s rapidly growing population, there is great concern that the food value chain currently wastes about 1,3 billion tons of the food produced every year. This is not only extremely counterproductive to achieving production targets, but according to the 2018 US ‘Food waste investment report’, it loses the international food value chain around US$3 trillion (about R51 trillion) in potential profits, and unnecessarily wastes or pollutes the planet’s already scarce natural resources.

A 2017 report by the World Wide Fund for Nature South Africa revealed that this country’s food value chain wasted about 10 million tons of food annually.

“Of this, fruit, vegetables and cereals account for 70% of the wastage and loss, primarily throughout the food supply