Useless information #89 - Unseen food. Say again?

Take it easy. It's not invisible food nor a newly developed food never seen before.

It's simply food that is being produced but never reaches the market and thus isn't accounted for in sectorial statistics or official figures altogether.

The framework for providing humankind food is complex. Planning, policies, laws, funding and subsidies. All depend on statistics and metrics. But the thing is that a reasonable portion of food that is produced is simply consumed by the producer (Food Self-Provisioning), offered to family and neighbours, sold in the village market or even traded.

How much? Hard to tell because there's no way to measure it. You have to rely on inquiries and assume people know what they're saying and they're being honest.

But one thing is for sure: the amount of "unseen food" is relevant enough to justify being regarded as relevant at least in some countries.
There have been some recent efforts to gather data on the subject and I had the pleasure of being part of one of those endeavors. A five year project to try to estimate how much of certain foods small farms produce and how they are integrated in the regional food systems.

I had actually posted about that before:
Food, agriculture and satellites: a glimpse of my new job

You can find a good and easy read on the subject here --> Unseen food: The importance of extra-market small farm's production for rural households in Europe

See you tomorrow for more Useless information!
Hive on!

RMach