Global Food Loss and Food Waste and the Environmental Footprint

Looking at the global context, the key-note speech will start by examining major trends in food security and nutrition and challenges ahead to feed a world of 9.2 billion people by 2050, 2.3 billion people more than today. It will look at urbanization, changing diets, rising middle class, natural resources and climate change. This is the context in which FAO is fulfilling its mandate to promote food security and nutrition for all, to preserve natural resources, and to promote economic development. Reducing food loss and waste is an integral part of efforts in view of achieving a zero hunger world. Every year, the world wastes or loses 1.3 billion metric tons of food, roughly one third of the globe’s food production. A short video developed by FAO will help better understand what food loss and waste means. The presentation will then examine food loss and waste from the perspective of food security and nutrition, its implications for the environment, and the economic impact. Food loss and waste is a complex issue. In a globalized world, the value chain for many food products is often very long and includes a great number of actors. The inter-dependence between the different links in this chain further contributes to the complexity: what happens at one point of the value chain can have a negative impact in other parts of the chain. The presentation will look at one case study developed by FAO, which examined loss and waste of maize in Kenya, which did show some unexpected results. It will highlight the importance of analysis and tools to design the response to food loss and waste in a coordinated and focused manner. Many of the actors along the value chain, from the farmer who cannot harvest to the consumer who throws away food into the waste bin, are part of the private sector or people acting in their individual capacity. Yet, the way society is organized will have an impact on their behavior. Food loss and waste is thus also a matter of policies, of development priorities, of education and sensitization. The presentation will examine the role of different stakeholders along the value chain and showcase some of their contributions to reducing food loss and waste. The presentation will argue that reducing food loss and waste is a low-hanging fruit that can make a considerable difference in reducing hunger and malnutrition, preserving the environment and contribute to economic development. In a world of limited resources, we not only need to produce more, we need to produce better and consume more intelligently