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We know that Europe is one of the regions in the world having been hit hardest by current financial crisis.
Millions of people are struggling to make ends due to the recession.
financial adjustments, cutbacks in expenditure, unemployment
But within this desolate outlook
there are people who have found surprising and rather positive ways
of working their way through it all
and incidentally helping others.
Carlos de Vega, our European correspondent, gives us in depth report
on how, by means of imagination and by utilising the internet,
a local initiative is now revolutionising the consumer network
and making good use of food that otherwise would end up going to waste.
Watch here:
It is harvest season in this garden in Berlin.
Raphael Fellmer lives here with his wife and child.
In a house that has been handed over to him by a charity organization.
They eat what they cultivate
and everything else they collect where it otherwise would remain.
They are a family have boldly gone on an entire monetary strike.
Raphael has not spent one single Euro on food in the last three years.
"There is something fundamentally wrong here.
There are famine-stricken communities of people
that lack basic needs on one side,
while on the other, millions of tons of food is being thrown away and wasted every single day."
This philosophy has lead him to establish "Foodsharing".
A network in which each and every person can offer remaining food,
so that neighbours can come and pick it up.
For free.
Instead of landing in the garbage, the food is shared within the community.
"Many people join us on this cause, people that invest time and energy for a good cause,
as they have the vision that anyone is able to make a change."
"Foodsharing" started in Germany and already has thousands of partners.
They also have plans about expanding onto other European countries.
The first project: Spain
We are at the North, León.
With some 100 000 inhabitants
and without any sort of industry.
The city grew along with the building sector
Many jobs have been destroyed by the crisis.
Nowadays more and more families from middle class (like this one here) struggle to make ends meet.
"It is not easy because my husband is the only one that works
and with his salary alone we would not make it until the end of the month without getting help from other family members."
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For the extreme cases this clerical dining facility provides
about 500 menus each day with the aid of donations.
"Some people here are already regular costumers.
People with a minimum pension of around 300 or 400 Euros just cannot survive."
In Barcelona alone there are 3 000 registered cases of infant malnutrition.
Attention!
In the Third World there are still around 10 000 children dying on a daily basis, according to "Action against Hunger".
Are we running out of food?
Is that the reason for the continous rise in price?
That is not exactly the case.
The first surprise:
There is more than sufficient useable agricultural area on our Earth.
However, it is neither easy nor cheap to make use of it.
Astonishingly, half of all unexploited land is in Africa.
Sudan, Uganda as well as Indonesia or Argentina sell their ground to Saudi Arabia, India or China.
Only 10% of China´s ground can be used as agricultural area.
Whereas a total of 20% of global population live there.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) points out
that this market is not profitable for countries that sell their land
as they usually sell for very low prices and the crops end up in other countries.
The second surprise:
The sanitary standards eliminate anything with a minimum defect from the food chain.
These here are pictures of the documentary "Samsara".
Identical foods are produced in mass here.
In the USA alone, 40 million tons of food are thrown away every single year.
Some countries are lacking food,
while others have too much of it.
It is an imbalance that we can try to avoid by means of some minor initiatives.
Such as assigning value to the things we eat
rather than wasting remaining food.
This supermarket in the capital city of Berlin can be seen as an example:
A small experiment is in progress to assign value to everything we eat,
while at the same time aiming to solidarise for those who have less.
Watch how it is done!
All foods here are ecological and come from small local community based farms. Each product has two prices.
It is the costumer that decides whether he or she would like to pay more.
They that have less, pay only what they can afford.
It is only an experiment.
Just the same as Raphael Fellmer´s idea of "Foodsharing".
Suggestions that orginate from Germany - a rich country
which is also out to have some effect on the Third World.
"A large part of the food that we consume and also throw away here in Europe is being imported from abroad.
From Africa, Latin America, Asia.
From all these places where millions of people struggle and suffer for food every single day.
Raphael doesn´t think about stepping back.
His current plan ist to a write a book,
so as to keep spreading awareness about the fact that there is no food deficiency, but in fact a lack of balanced distribution.
In the meantime he continues to cultivate his garden
Subtitles by the Amara.org community