How much food is lossed and wasted?

A document by Maximo Torero Cullen, FAO Chief Economist, produced for the policy seminar "Food Loss and Waste in Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains", explains the current status of food loss and waste. The seminar was organized by IFPRI, Embassy of Denmark, and World Resource Institute. The figures indicate 828 million people are undernourished and more than 3.1 billion people in the world cannot afford healthy diets. Vitamin A deficiency affecting 500,000 childhood blindness /year. Folic acid deficiency resulting in 88,000 child deaths /year. Iron deficiency affects millions of children. The document explains the difference between food loss (till processing & packaging), and food waste (the further steps). 13.2 percent of food, valued at $400 billion is lost on an annual basis between harvest and the retail market (FAO 2019); this represent almot no change since the first estimates of 2016 (13.8%). 17 cent of food production is wasted in households, food services and in retail (UNEP 2020). Highest losses occur in the fruits and vegetable food group, reaching 31.15%. This is explained due the high perishability and few intervention strategies. "If we reduced FLW by 50%, there would be sufficient Fruits & Vegetables available in the food supply to cover the recommendations globally." The documento als analyzes the impact of the food looses and wastes (FLW) in the food system sustainability, and the priority areas for reducing FLW. SourcesKader PHScience Community WhatsApp group, managed by Dr. Sunil Pareek