Tell Your Story 2022 Workshop Session: A Brief Story of World’s Food Crisis

A food crisis is not a new issue. Food has been an inevitable primary need for people. Various things that happen, whether climate change or economic change, can threaten our need for food sources. Therefore, this crisis is an issue that we have to tackle together.

This is the topic that was also delivered by Yahya Shafiyuddin in event of #tellyourstory 2022 with the theme “Secure Our Food from Crisis”, a Workshop by Tay Juhana Foundation to invite youths to contribute to voice out food crisis issue. Yahya is a Food System & Sustainability Researcher at Tay Juhana Foundation who is currently pursuing his doctoral study at the Hungarian University of Agricultural and Life Science.

The workshop which was held on Saturday, October 1st, 2022, invited 3 speakers to deliver different perspectives in packing audio-visual educative content about the food crisis issue. In the workshop, Yahya mainly explained the world food crisis, the factors, and the solutions that we can do together.

Yahya explained that the food which we can easily access perhaps will be harder to get or even disappear. This could happen because of several factors, such as climate change, natural disasters, or world economic change that impact export policy from one country to another. In another part of the world, hunger has even been happening and could possibly increase or spread to another part of the world. Yahya also mentioned some cases of food crises in the world, such as in Somalia and Pakistan. This thing sure is a big threat to our food needs and humanity.

But, behind the threatening food crisis, surely there is a solution that we can do.

Yahya was quoting Ir. Jaka Widada, M.P., Ph.D., a professor of Universitas Gadjah Mada said,

“The symptoms that cause food crises, especially in Indonesia, should be watched out for. Therefore, efforts are needed to develop varieties that are adaptive to extreme weather, produce fertilizers at affordable prices and are environmentally friendly, and avoid wasteful behavior. In addition, it is important to focus on the regeneration of farmers. With the Internet of Things (IoT), farming can become a lucrative profession for future generations.”

Yahya then explained that there is still hope for the threat of a food crisis if we can find alternatives and change our consumption patterns.

In fact, one out of three food produced by humans is lost or wasted in the process. This could happen due to poor storage facilities, lack of access to technology and markets, poor diet, and overbuying habits. Therefore, improvements must be made by two parties, both producers and consumers.

From the producer side, producers can plan production according to market demand, improve technology, market innovation, and carry out better food packaging. Meanwhile, consumers must also use and store leftovers properly, plan food menus with portions that suit their needs, and have a new perception of food so that there is no excessive consumption pattern.

At the end of his presentation, Yahya closed it with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi “There’s enough on this planet for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed.” This again emphasized a message that by caring for each other and being aware of our food consumption and production needs, it is very possible to overcome the current and potential food crisis.