Study on Reducing Food Loss and Waste

June 5 is World Environment Day. On the same day, the World Resources Institute (World Resources Institute) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) jointly released the "Food Loss and Waste" (Reducing Food Loss and Waste) research report, saying that 1/4 of the food produced by the global agricultural system is lost or wasted. This poses a serious challenge to reducing the hungry and meeting the food needs of the world's rapidly growing population.

The report shows that more than half of food loss and waste in developed countries such as Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia occurs during the consumption stage. In contrast, in developing countries, about two-thirds of food loss and waste occurs during the harvest and storage stages. The world's annual land area used to produce lost and wasted food is equivalent to the land area of Mexico, consuming about 28 million tons of chemical fertilizers, and the inefficient use of chemical fertilizers is related to climate change and the increase in marine dead zones where aquatic life cannot survive due to severe pollution. On the other hand, if the greenhouse gas emissions from the production of the world's annual lost and wasted food are compared to the emissions of a country, then it will become the third largest greenhouse gas emitter after the United States and China. According to the current global food consumption trend, the global food demand will be 1.6 times that of 2006 by 2050, but if the current huge food loss and waste are reduced by half, the gap will be reduced by 1/5. Reducing loss and waste is therefore a key link in the transition to more sustainable food security.

Food production requires energy, water and land resources. Under the severe challenges of increasingly scarce natural resources and increasingly serious environmental problems, wasting food is equivalent to wasting natural resources and destroying the environment. The report recommends setting universal standards for governments and private enterprises to measure and report food loss and food waste; setting global, national and corporate reduction targets for food loss and food waste; expanding investment to reduce food losses during the harvest stage in developing countries; and establishing institutions and organizations in developed countries to reduce food waste.

http://pdf.wri.org/reducing_food_loss_and_waste.pdf

(Responsible editor: Shixin)