Build better roads in developing world to bolster food supplies: study

By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) – Billion-dollar investments in basic transport and electricity in developing nations are among the best ways to curb hunger by 2030 since a quarter of all food is now wasted after harvest, according to a report issued on Thursday. A total of $239 billion invested over the next 15 years, in road and railway connections to connect farms to markets and in electricity supplies to improve cold storage, would yield benefits of $3.1 trillion by safeguarding food, it said. Mark Rosegrant, lead author and a director of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, said that rural infrastructure was often overlooked by governments and investors as a way to cut food waste from rice to beef. Food losses, ranging from poor harvesting techniques in fields to rotting vegetables in consumers’ kitchens, wipe out a quarter of all food produced, according to one 2012 study.