“Every Expo visitor will have to get involved in changing the world”

Imagine an area the size of Canada being used to grow crops, and imagine taking all of the produce and throwing it away. This is how much food we, the Earth’s inhabitants, waste every year: an average of eighty five kilos per person, per year. It is a lot, too much. It was at this point that the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition began to work, six years ago, on producing the document that was delivered to the Minister Maurizio Martina, during its sixth international forum. The Milan protocol is a painstaking work that brought the most important experts together to discuss the topic that will be behind Expo, and that will be behind the document given to everyone taking part in the universal exposition: the Milan charter.

"We’re going to ask all visitors to be personally responsible," the Minister explained, "so that Expo is no just a series of objects or exhibition halls, but something that forces everyone to think about the topic of feeding the planet." This is a new activity in the history of universal expositions, "but given the importance of the topic, we can’t afford to leave it to the end."

Infographic: the three paradoxes of nutrition

The aim of involving the visitors directly is, to a great extent, to overcome the three paradoxes today that accompany the world of food, starting from the fact that one third of the wasted food is thrown away by the consumer, who must agree to change his consumption. The teacher, Philip Lymbery, explained, "If we took all of the land used to feed animals and we used it for human nutrition, we could immediately feed 4 billion people." However, at the same time, "if everyone ate five portions of fruit and vegetables every day, what we have available wouldn’t be enough." And so, the challenge set by the Milan protocol goes well beyond this: a huge entrepreneurial, political and social commitment. The first step in the calendar will be the European Parliament’s ratification of the document, which dozens of companies have already signed.

This challenge can no longer be postponed. "In about 10 years’ time, we’ll have to provide food for an additional one billion people," Marie Haga, the director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, explained, "and we’ll have to learn to do it with less: less land, less water, fewer pesticides."

This is an inevitable process that, as Ertharin Cousin of the World Food Program explained, requires a radical change in mentality. "If we continue to do what we’ve always done we’ll get what we’ve always got, but this time, many people are saying that we can do something different, that we’ve got to do something different." And this will have to be completed, with everyone’s support.