Ironically, World Food Day, developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and celebrated annually on October 16, comes just 4 days after National Farmers Day.

This year’s World Food Day theme, “Our actions are our future” focuses on “better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life” for generations to come.

Sound familiar?  If you are a farmer or rancher, it should.  This is the focus of farmers and ranchers everywhere every day.

The FAO talks about an agri-food system where a variety of sufficient, nutritious and safe foods are available at an affordable price to everyone, and no one is hungry or suffers from any form of malnutrition, but what exactly is an “agri-food system”?

In a nutshell, it is the world behind our food, but it is much more complex than that.  It includes the path of food from how it is grown to how it is eaten and disposed of, if applicable.  It also includes non-food ag products and all that goes into getting food and ag products into the hands of the consumer.

This is where the FAO is focusing—on the consumer.  Through a series of 17 goals, many unrelated to food and food production but yet having the potential to affect the way food is produced, they are pushing for transformation of diets to transform agri-food systems into ones fit for the future.

With this information in mind, farmers and ranchers have implemented many practices allowing for sustainability of food production well into the future.  Some of these practices include the use of GMO crops on the farming side of food production and ranchers using cattle to graze land not suitable for growing crops just to name a couple.

What can consumers do?  Food takes up more space in US landfills than anything else and an estimated 33% of all food produced in the world for human consumption goes to waste each year, resulting in approximately 8% of all greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE).  This is just 1% below GHGE from all of US agriculture combined.  Therefore, I challenge anyone who reads this post to set a goal of reducing food waste in your household not just on World Food Day but every day.