20 May 2011

One-third of global food production goes to waste
About one-third of the food produced globally for human consumption each year is wasted, according to a new report from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The report , Global Food Losses and Food Waste, is based on research from the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology. It found that wastage in production and storage often translates to lost income for small farmers in particular, and higher prices for poor consumers, adding that reducing losses could have an ‘immediate and significant’ impact on livelihoods.

The FAO found that about 1.3bn tonnes of food is wasted somewhere along the supply chain each year, with wealthier consumers in North America and Europe wasting nearly twice as much as those in poorer countries. Consumers in richer countries throw away about 222m tonnes of food each year, most of it fruit and vegetables, and nearly as much as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa, at 230m tonnes.

However, industrialized and developing countries tend to waste about the same amount of food on an absolute basis, the report found – 670m tonnes a year and 630m tonnes a year respectively. While most food wastage in richer nations occurs on a consumer level, in developing countries about 40 percent of wastage happens at the post-harvest or processing level due to poor infrastructure and lack of investment in food production systems – a problem the report terms ‘food loss’.

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