KLAUS PICHLER | ONE THIRD
«A project on food. Think of a random item of food. An orange, for example. This orange, cultivated on a plantation in South Africa, harvested and transferred to Europe by plane and truck over a distance of 15.000 km, sold in a supermarket and finally, although still in good condition, discarded by the consumer. Fiction? Fact!
Waste of food around the globe has increased to worrying dimensions: According to a study, commissioned by the UN and carried out in March 2011, one third of all food products go to waste worldwide.
In March 2011 the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) published a study about food waste. It revealed that, on average, a third of all products of the food industry go to waste worldwide, ranging between 25 and 75%, depending on the product. Altogether, 1.3 billion tons of edible goods are discarded each year, while the global south is hit by recurrent periods of severe starvation. This problem has increased dramatically since the hike in food prices on the global market after the 2007 ‘Food Price Crisis’. This state of affairs is not as paradoxical as one may assume, however- it is part of the neoliberal global economic system, which the globalized food industry is a part of.
The series of photographs ‘One Third‘ focuses on this particular percentage. It highlights the issue of food waste through photographs and reports, which are combined to offer an insight into this phenomenon, ranging from its geopolitical background and cultural history to individual consumer behaviour».