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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Factual: Science & Nature

Programme answering listeners' questions about planet Earth and our impact upon it

Home Planet: 22/02/2011

22/02/2011

BBC Radio 4 - Home Planet, 22/02/2011

Can we reduce food scarcity by reducing food waste?

Food prices are at their highest for years, causing problems for the world's poorest people. Yet we still waste 40 per cent of our food. Can reducing waste help solve shortages?

We waste, so we are told, up to 40% of the food we buy. Huge mountains of rotting vegetables, veritable lakes of sour milk. And at the same time food prices have reached an historic high. Some commentators even suggest that the unrest in Egypt was in part due to the high cost of basic ingredients. This week you ask whether part of the solution to feeding the world lies in reducing the amount of food we throw away. 

Folklore suggests coppiced trees live forever but, you ask, can this really be the case? Where do grasses hide their flowers, why do crop plants become sterile over time? And how high is or was the highest mountain ever to have existed on Earth?

On the panel this week are Human Geographer Professor Sue Buckingham of Brunel University; Professor Denis Murphy, plant geneticist from the University of Glamorgan and Professor Philip Stott, an environmental scientist from the University of London.


Presenter: Richard Daniel
Producer: Toby Murcott
A Pier Production for BBC Radio 4.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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