France tops in healthy farming

Bangkok – France’s aggressive measures to tackle food waste, promote healthy lifestyles and adopt eco-farming techniques helped it top a ranking of nations, published yesterday, which assesses their food sustainability.

The Netherlands, Canada, Finland and Japan rounded out the top five, and Rwanda scored highest among low-income countries in an index by the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Barilla Centre for Food & Nutrition Foundation.

China, the US and Britain failed to make the top 20 of 67 nations that were graded on food waste, sustainable agriculture, and health and nutrition. Globally, a third of all food produced is wasted every year, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

“France has been in the vanguard of measures to reduce such losses,” said Martin Koehring, the index’s author.

France introduced legislation in 2016 requiring supermarkets to redistribute leftover food to charities. It is also going ahead with an agroecology policy that includes rotating crops to improve soil fertility and less use of chemical fertiliser.

Rwanda scored high due to healthier and sustainable farming practices.