Hunger and food wastage

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations talks about people like Sada Bahar in its report. Pakistan must listen to it to ensure the frontliners are not left behind. Amid growing climate impacts and slow progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable food systems and agricultural practices can help Pakistan adapt, build resilience and mitigate emissions, thereby ensuring food security and nutrition.

Agriculture, more than any other sector, might be our best bet for mitigating climate change. But for these solutions to flourish, we must first remove the barriers that silence women, youth, Indigenous Peoples and marginalised communities — and trust the people who have always known how to live with the land, not against it.

On the frontlines of the climate crisis, family farmers, herders, fishers, forest dwellers and food workers provide nearly 80 per cent of the world's food — and bear the heaviest burden of a changing planet. As droughts scorch fields, floods drown livelihoods and seasons grow unpredictable, decades of progress are being undone. Entire ecosystems that once sustained communities now teeter on the edge of collapse. The future of food — and of those who produce it — depends on policies that are both lasting and adaptable, built on local wisdom and inclusive participation. From farmer field schools to Indigenous knowledge systems, the answers already exist in the hands of those closest to the soil. Yet, unfortunately, people who feed the world have to go to bed hungry themselves.

These are the people like Sada Bahar whom I met almost eleven years ago. He was serving us tea on the outskirts of Bahawalnagar at a small roadside stall. It was the start of my career as a fresh engineer deployed to investigate a transmission line. My team and I would stop at different places for breakfast before heading to work, and that morning, it was Sada's stall that welcomed us. He told me he used to work on his farmland, but due to the rising cost of production, losses and lack of storage facilities, they are no longer able to afford their generation-old occupation and hence he had no choice but to be a tea boy to help his family of six siblings survive. They could only eat when he brought home after earning his daily wage; otherwise, they went to bed hungry.

Nearly one-third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted - an amount so vast that if food loss and waste were a nation, it would rank as the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Behind every grain wasted lies a farmer's despair, a family's struggle, and a planet gasping under the weight of our neglect. On the frontlines of the climate crisis, family farmers, herders, fishers and fish farmers, forest dwellers, food workers and their families provide 70 to 80 per cent of the world's food. They play a fundamental role in biodiversity preservation and climate action, but now face much faster and more severe shifts in weather and climate patterns.

In countries like Pakistan, where energy shortages and the absence of cold storage facilities cause harvests to spoil before sunrise, waste is not just a statistic - it is a heartbreak. It means crops that could have nourished communities instead feed landfills, releasing more carbon into an already fevered atmosphere. The human and economic toll — $3.5 trillion every year — barely captures the deeper tragedy: a world abundant in resources but impoverished in responsibility. Hunger is not the absence of food. It is the presence of indifference.

Ironically, the last thing I asked Sada Bahar was if he knew the meaning of his name. He paused, scratching his head, his hair tangled with days of dust and sweat. A faint grin appeared on his tired face as he glanced down at his blue shalwar kameez — stained with tea, worn thin by work — and his nylon sandals that barely hid his mud-caked feet. While clearing our table, gathering the empty cups and trays with the same care he probably gave to his dreams, he said softly, "My mother once told me ... it means forever spring.