Scholars of Sustenance Addressing World Food Insecurity at the Atlantic Council’s G20 Global Food Security Forum.

DENPASAR, BALI, INDONESIA, November 16, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Scholars Of Sustenance highlighted the fastest available climate impacts from immediate Excess Food Rescue at the Atlantic Council’s G20 Global Food Security Forum.

Scholars Of Sustenance (SOS), the largest food rescue non-profit in South-East Asia spoke at the Atlantic Council’s Global Food Security Forum in Bali, Indonesia. Operating their cool chain technology trucks and staff of 80+ highly motivated employees, SOS has created one of the quicker solutions to World Food Insecurity.

SOS was created to optimize the food supplies in South-East Asia. By saving surplus foods from the hospitality and retail industries, tons of food every day is prevented from ending up in the land fills to create the very harmful methane gases. As a side effect to this environmental endeavor, SOS has also established a safe cool-chain rescue process, whereby healthy high nutrition is made available to millions less fortunate.

Circular Economy drives the principles of this American based charity with Danish Sustainability origins. Over one-third of all food in the world is lost, but where often the consumer in the Western world throws away the food, mainly commercial entities in Asia have the unavoidable and necessary food waste. “You cannot operate a professional five-star hotel or top-end supermarket without proper quality requirements causing food ingredients to be lost. Wilted vegetables or over-cooked food cannot be served; thus SOS works with large hotels and retailers to minimize the food wasted, and then harvests the still beautiful, healthy and edible food, inspecting and providing it to those in need same day.

The G20 this year is currently held in Bali, Indonesia, where SOS trucks alone during COVID has served 3 million nutritious meals to help counter the virus. Since inception 6 years ago, the hardworking SOS staffs in three countries have provided over 25 million meals, and as the post-COVID world is recovering, SOS look forward to obtaining much more excess foods, thereby reducing CO2 from the landfills. It’s a noble mission, hotel chefs and food managers love it, as they not only save trash removal fees, but see their unavoidable surplus foods go to a good purpose.

SOS is proud to have an impact on the world’s food supplies, yet as Bo H. Holmgreen, Founder and CEO of SOS Global, stated in the Global Food Security Council panel, governments must step up to the plate. Speaking after the Ukrainian Ambassador, Mr. Holmgreen chose to mention his personal discovery in Kiev of the 1932 Ukrainian Holodomor (Famine), where Stalin confiscated all food grown in Ukraine to Russia – leaving horrible starvation, killing 4 million Ukrainians. The world cannot allow one man to have such an impact on the food supplies of the world, but as discussed during the two days of meetings, Russia’s war in Ukraine has a substantial impact on the world’s wheat supplies. “Even here on the other side of the world, in Indonesia the war effects are felt in food prices and availability - so what good is it that wonderful organizations like SOS creates circular economies to help optimize the food supply chains by avoiding senseless food waste, if governments cannot stabilize the basic flow of food?”, asked Mr. Holmgreen.

Continuing, Mr. Holmgreen added how America implemented the Good Samaritan Law and is now dealing with the “best by date” vs real expiration date confusion, and hopefully CO2 reduction acts will create direct tax benefits for organizations donating food to organizations like SOS. Thus, governments can do a lot, locally and internationally – but first they need to respect the food supply chain and the now (this week) 8 billion people relaying on it. General Wesley Clark pointed out how incredible it is that he has seen us grown from 2 to 8 billion citizens, and we still have enough food.

SOS early on researched the food industries worldwide and was established for one main reason: 10-8-1. “We are 8 billion inhabitants of this globe, we every day make enough food for 10+ billion, yet one billion of us go to bed hungry every night. We simply have a distribution problem! We at SOS aim at our principles of a future with Food Equity, where access to good nutrition is less about money in hand, and more about desperation and need”.

More people go from poverty to middle class in Asia, so harvesting their new food waste levels helps SOS provide meals to those still left in poverty. Covid made this even worse as SOS lost the hospitality food with hotels closing for COVID, and SOS had to buy the food ingredients instead of rescuing excess foods. Now society operates again, commercial food waste is growing and must be reduced or prevented as much as possible.

“The old adage - don’t give people food, but teach them how to fish – still applies, but our new version is LET’S AT LEAST EAT ALL THE FISH THAT’S ALREADY OUT OF THE WATER!”, added Mr. Holmgreen. By saving the incredible food waste and making sure this good nutrition goes into stomachs rather than landfills, SOS believes in quick impacts on the environment and people. “When we go to a village with tons of good food, we assemble the kids to sing at the cooling truck – it becomes a happy event – respecting our slogan that SOS does this for the people, the land and the spirit!”

Turid Kaehny
Scholars of Sustenance
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