6 Minute English / United against food waste

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Neil.SamAnd I'm Sam.NeilDoes this situation sound familiar to you, Sam? You reach into the kitchen refrigerator looking for something to eat, only to find a brown lettuce, a sad-looking cucumber, and some two-week old fish, all past its use-by date - the date printed on the food container showing how long it is safe to eat.SamOh, I'm guilty of wasting food, Neil - me and many others. According to the UN, one third of the food we grow ends up in the rubbish bin. And it's not just food that's wasted - it's also the resources used to produce that food, things like water, land and transport.NeilIn this programme, we'll be talking about food waste. We'll meet the people trying to stop us from throwing good food away, and, as usual, we'll be learning some new vocabulary as well.

Here in the UK, big supermarkets import food from abroad for customers to enjoy all year round. Summer fruit like strawberries and mangos are flown in from tropical countries and sold in winter, increasing carbon emissions as well as waste.

Yes, that's why you hear the phrase, 'eat local, eat seasonal' to encourage people to buy and eat food which has been grown in their local area, at that time of year. So, Sam, my question is - which of the following foods can be grown in Britain throughout the year? Is it:a) strawberries?b) kale? or,c) rhubarb?

Hmmm, it's definitely not strawberries 'cos they only grow in summer, so I'll say b) kale.

OK, I'll reveal the answer later. We've talked about supermarkets in Britain, but food waste is happening all over the world. In Puerto Rico, too, most people shop in supermarkets, making it difficult for farmers to choose what to sell, and how much to charge for their fruit and vegetables.

Josefina Arcay is a farmer who wanted to make it easier for customers to buy local food. She started an online shop to connect shoppers with farmers directly, without the supermarkets. Here Josefina explains her project to Jo Mathys, reporter for BBC World Service Programme, People Fixing The World.

So Josefina, that's the farmer who we heard earlier growing those giant avocados, she used to have to sell her crops to these kind of middlemen.

We had a lot of I don't know how you call carreros... it's just people that have a big truck and they will just come by, and they will say, 'What do you have? Ohhh that's too expensive! Wooh very expensive! I want it half that price'. So I didn't have any way of controlling how I was going to sell - it just depended on these people coming.

And a lot of these carreros are kind of commissioned by the supermarkets. All this leads to food waste because it's really hard for farmers, like Josefina, to predict which crops they're going to be able to sell.