By Sharon Atieno
As the world marks the fifth observance of the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste, there is need for increased and concerted efforts to deal with this menace.
According to the United Nations, around 13.2 percent of food produced is lost between harvest and retail worldwide, while an estimated 19 percent of total global food production is wasted in households, in the food service and in retail all together.
Further, households waste over one billion meals worth of edible food daily. This is equivalent of 1.3 meals daily for everyone in the world affected by hunger.
This year’s celebrations draws focus on the critical need for financing to bolster efforts, to reduce food loss and waste.
The UN observes that opportunities to finance food loss and waste reduction and low-carbon diets remain untapped. So far, only USD 1 billion was invested annually in 2019/20. This is just a minor fraction of annual needs estimated at USD 48 to 50 billion.
According to the Food Waste Index 2024 report, there is need for systemic action through public-private partnerships (PPPs). This involves bringing the public sector, private sector and non-government to work together, identify bottlenecks, co-develop solutions, and drive progress.
The report finds that appropriate financing can enable PPPs to deliver farm-to-fork reductions in food waste, drive down GHGs emissions and water stress, while sharing best practices and encouraging innovation for long-term, holistic change.
Further, a new World Bank report has found that though investing in food loss and waste can deliver big wins, countries still need well targeted solutions.
According to the authors of the report titled Addressing Food Loss and Waste: A Global Problem with Local Solutions, trade-offs between food affordability, rural livelihoods, and sustainable use of natural resources can only be avoided if they are first identified and then addressed with clear policy priorities in mind.
The main author of the study and Senior Advisor Agriculture and Food Global Practice at the World Bank, Geeta Sethi notes that policy priorities and the specific circumstances of each country should guide the focus on different stages of the supply chain.
“Countries need good data and analysis to choose the right policy instruments and make sound investments,” Sethi said in a press release.
The report looks at four case studies examining food loss and waste challenges and opportunities for Guatemala, Nigeria, Rwanda and Vietnam. Based on the diagnostics, they are several targeted policy recommendations.
In Rwanda for instance, the report notes that improving weather and market information reaching farmers is one way to reduce food loss and waste. This is useful especially where farmers often overplant to hedge against risks and uncertainty, leading to crop losses at the moment of harvest.
In Nigeria, adressing transportation constraints along a busy North-South corridor could eensue that more food reaches the burgeoning population in the South.Thus reducing loss and waste.
Investments in storage systems at the farm or cooperative levels in Guatemala could greatly reduce losses and generate more sales from poor subsistence farmers and therefore higher incomes, making a dent on rural poverty and hunger while in Vietnam, improving food safety would allow the country to produce more and better food from dwindling natural resources, reduce the health impact of unsafe food on its citizens, and increase its compliance with import-export standards so that food is less frequently rejected.
Benefits of addressing food loss and waste
Addressing food loss and waste throughout the supply chain, from production to consumption would improve the overall efficiency of the food system, helping to ensure that more food reaches those in need.
Additionally, it would help in making our food systems sustainable by focusing on the adoption of integrated approaches designed to reduce food loss and waste.
This entails introducing technologies, innovative solutions (including e-commerce platforms for marketing, retractable mobile food processing systems), new ways of working and good practices to manage food quality and reduce food loss and waste.
Reducing food loss and waste would help in combatting climate change by reducing greenhouse gases (GHG) emission.
Food waste generates an estimated nearly 10% of global GHG emissions (including from both loss and waste), while it takes up the equivalent of nearly 30% of the world’s agricultural land.
If no action is taken to deal with food loss and waste, the world will be off track in achieving target 12.3 of Sustainable Development Goal 12 (responsible consumption and production).Thus, there is an urgent need to accelerate action.
