Abstract

About one third of food produced for human consumption – approximately 1.3 billion tons per year – is lost or wasted. The reasons vary widely. While in developing countries a large proportion of the harvest is lost on its way to the consumer due to poor infrastructure (streets, storage, cooling), inappropriate packaging and means of transportation, in industrialised countries a significant share of food is wasted by suppliers, retailers and consumers.

Food loss and waste goes in hand with wastage of resources including water, energy, land, labour and capital. There is a growing awareness that food security cannot be achieved with an increase in productivity alone. Against this background, it is a great challenge to provide a population of over 9 billion people in 2050 with sufficient, healthy food and at the same time find solutions for growing resource scarcities. Therefore, this session not only aims to reveal causes of food waste and losses, but also to discuss what kind of action is already being taken by governments, business and civil society in a view to reduce food losses and wastage.

The session started with an overview presentation on food loss and implicit water losses across the agricultural value chain, followed by two presentations that focus on reasons for post harvest losses in developing countries and food wastage in developed countries. A panel discussion amongst representatives from civil society, business, agriculture and science brought in the perspective of consumers, producers and food processors.