We and Our Mountains, have you seen this movie?
I'm sure you did, and I think you will agree with me
that this is the masterpiece of the Armenian cinematography.
Every time you watch this movie,
you discover something new on a broad range of topics,
starting from politics and even agriculture and economics.
I'd like to share a piece of that movie,
that I consider very important
for each farmer, an economist and even a policy maker.
Let's watch that.
(Video in Armenian)
[Do you think taking the herd to the city like this is the right thing to do?]
[First, we are not sheep sellers; the State is the one buying it.]
[We are not supposed to get there and ask them to buy our sheep.]
[They need to come and ask if we have any sheep to sell.]
[Then they need to send 100 trucks to load the sheep]
[and get to the slaughter house in half an hour.]
[There are 830 sheep ... 70 km distance in two days ...]
[Each sheep in these two days will lose at least two kg of weight.]
[830 times two ... 1,660 kg]
[or 1.6 tons of meat loss.]
[1,600 divided by 20 makes 80 sheep.]
[If someone supplies an extra 80 sheep,]
[the State awards him the title of hero.]
[His photo gets published in newspapers in Moscow,]
[and he gets 1,000 rouble reward.]
[Now we are witnessing a loss of 1.6 tons of meat,]
[but nobody will blame us.]
[While actually we should be imprisoned.]
It's amazing, yeah?
It's amazing how literate were the Armenian farmers in the 1960s.
(Laughter)
In one minute, Pavle was able to recognize
that he's losing live weight of the animals,
calculate how much was lost,
and even suggest that, by the law, they are to be imprisoned.
He's talking about the prevention, how to prevent the loss.
In today's terms, these 80 sheep,
which is now Armenia's top exportable product,
would be worth about four million drams.
There'll be no farmer that would like to have such a loss,
if you realized about that.
But in the modern world, it happens over and over again,
in many sectors of the economy.
Globally, food waste and loss is a hot topic, today.
About 1/3 of the food produced in the world for human consumption
gets wasted or lost.
This is nearly 1.3 billion tons
or more than half of the world's annual cereal crop.
The issue should concern not only the rich, developed countries
but also small developing countries, such as Armenia.
Because in Armenia, agriculture and the food processing together
make about 30% of the GDP of the country.
We have a lot of people employed in agriculture,
about 36% of the work force,
and most importantly,
we still have a high rate of rural poverty, about 32% nationwide,
but in certain regions we have even more, alarming rate of rural poverty.
Preventing food waste and loss
will have a positive impact on raising incomes;
improving food security, food quality and safety;
on economic development; and on the environment.
We need to recognize that the food waste and loss
also represents waste of resources used in the production.
Like in my case, if I lose apples and the wheat,
then I also lose the resources I used in the production
of these apples and the wheat,
like energy, water, land, input.
So, irrespective of the economic development of the country,
the food waste and loss should be kept to a minimum.
We are losing food across the food supply chain,
starting from egg production to the consumption stage.
In the field
because of improper harvest timing,
poor machinery,
mechanical damage;
in the post handling and the storage stage
because of inappropriate storage conditions,
poor temperature control;
in the processing stage because of mechanical damage,
during packaging and processing;
in the groceries and markets, because of unsold food,
outdated food,
poor storage conditions;
and in our homes.
Was it because of wrong shopping behaviour?
Plate waste?
And again some poor storage?
In fact I'd like to mention here
that the loss is measured for the products
that are directed to human consumption.
Though sometimes, people, especially in rural areas, argue that:
"We don't waste anything, we don't trash anything.
We just feed to our cows and pigs."
It's kind of an expensive food for the cows, right?
I wonder if they ask the cows what to buy for the dinner.
(Laughter)
As to asking,
we did a survey on food waste and loss in Armenia
on several selected commodities,
and we got shocking results.
In fact, the methodology is based
on Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,
and all allocation and the conversion factors have been considered.
Here's what we have.
About 30% of the wheat available for human consumption in Armenia
gets wasted or lost every year.
This is about 129,000 tons.
The monetary value of that would be 32 million dollars.
And this is in a country where wheat is a strategic crop,
very important for food security.
We are a net importer of wheat.
We are importing about 60% of the total wheat we need in the country.
If we just add these three numbers and convert to money,
it would be 40 billion drams.
Our statistics state
that in order to eliminate poverty from our country,
we need about 84 billion drams.
We are throwing away, just in the case of these three commodities,
about 40 billion drams.
Where exactly we trash the food?
It depends on each commodity.
In the case of potato,
the most of it happens during the production stage,
mostly due to mechanical damage in the harvest time,
and also some in the storage because of the poor condition.
And it happened to myself.
Couple of years ago, I rented a cold storage facility
to keep my apples for the New Year,
as many farmers do,
and I lost 30% of it.
It was about 1.5 tons, that time.
This was because of poor temperature control,
there was no proper disinfection done,
poor boxing.
Overall it was poor storage facility.
And many farmers still face such problems.
In the case of wheat,
about 26% of the loss happens during the production.
And these last two numbers, like 22, 15,
which is the later stage of supply chain,
37% of wheat or bread and pastry,
we are losing in our homes or supermarkets.
The wheat loss, at the farm level only, equals to nine million dollars.
Or in other terms,
we can buy 90 brand new high technology combine harvesters.
It's kind of ridiculous, right?
From one side,
because of mechanical damage due to poor machinery,
we are throwing away 90 brand new combine harvesters
every year.
In fact, in Armenia we have 1,400 harvesters.
According to statistics,
about 83% of them are operational.
But how operational are they?
It's a big question.
I remember back in the mid 90s
when I was studying at the Economics University -
I see a lot of young people,
I'm sure you've studied depreciation.
Yes?
I studied physical depreciation, financial depreciation,
accounting depreciation and - a kind of a funny term -
moral depreciation.
Have you heard of a moral depreciation?
A kind of a Soviet term, right?
But I didn't realize that until in Canada, a couple of years later,
I saw a combine harvester working in the field without a driver,
through a GPS control satellite, just the high-tech stuff.
Then I realized: compared to this machine,
our machines will be morally depreciated.
What should an Armenian farmer do, or what the farmer is doing,
when a physically and morally depreciated machine,
like this one,
is trying to harvest the food of the farmer?
He is praying.
(Laughter)
Because you never know what will happen to that machine
when the harvest is over.
But one thing is certain:
Until the harvest is over, farmers look as tired as the machine.
What to do?
Let's act just as Pavle, from the movie, suggests:
Recognize, calculate and prevent.
Recognize the fact
that we are wasting and losing food.
We need to make people aware of this very important issue.
Calculate the amount lost.
As Peter Drucker said:
"If you don't measure, you are not able to manage."
And prevent.
Of course, I'm not saying that we need to jail everyone - as Pavle says.
But we can educate the farmer,
we can invest in resource sufficient technologies,
we can invest in new machinery,
we can build modern enough cold storage facilities for our farmers.
Or simply change our behavior.
Gnel Ghazaryan, a live stock farmer in Arpi village of Vayots Dzor,
already changed his livestock management behavior of the farming practices.
He's transporting all his animals to the mountainous pastures
using trucks - like Pavle suggested -
and he saved, last year, four tons of animal live weight.
After this study,
I also completely changed my food-purchasing behavior.
I don't think my wife is happy about that.
I'm now acting as a food guard in my home.
I stopped purchases of bulk quantities of food.
I'm now doing more frequent purchases in less quantity,
paying attention to the storage conditions, etc.
The results are visible in our family budget.
If some people can change behavior,
why can't others do the same?
If we all change our behavior, collectively as a country,
if our development people and policy makers
pay more attention to food waste and losses
and the prevention of that mechanism,
the results will be visible in our country budget.
And pretty soon, we'll be able to eliminate poverty from our country.
So, go home and, please, save food.
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)