Responds to call by G20 agriculture ministers to tackle this global problem
Rome—The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
(FAO), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and
the CGIAR research program on Policies, Institutions, and
Markets (PIM) launched a new initiative to enhance global cooperation on
measuring and reducing food loss and waste. The G20 agriculture ministers
requested FAO and IFPRI to launch this initiative in Istanbul, Turkey, this
past May.
The Technical Platform on the
Measurement and Reduction of Food Loss and Waste is an information-sharing
and coordination network involving diverse stakeholders, such as international
organizations, development banks, non-governmental organizations, and the private
sector.
Platform partners will work together
to enhance the measurement of food loss and waste, exchange knowledge and
information, and share best practices to tackle the global challenges of food
loss and waste.
“The G20 Platform will enhance our
capacity to accurately measure food loss and waste, both in the G20 countries
and in low-income countries,” said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.
“It will bring new expertise and knowledge for improving metrics. It will
also respond to countries’ need for knowledge and good practices.”
“We must coordinate global efforts
to reduce food loss and waste to enhance our ability to sustainably eliminate
global hunger and undernutrition,” said IFPRI Director-General Shenggen Fan.
“This new platform is a critical step in this direction.”
Currently, one-third of global food
production—enough food to feed two billion people for a year—is lost or wasted
annually. The G20 agriculture ministers noted the significant food loss and
waste throughout food value chains as “a global problem of enormous economic,
environmental and societal significance”.
The Platform
will:
Lead efforts to improve the
measurement of food loss and waste; build capacity to reduce food loss and
waste in G20 countries as well as in lower-income nations. This capacity
building effort includes “South-South” knowledge transfers;
Provide evidence-based advocacy on
the scope, causes and costs of food loss and waste; Monitor global developments
on food loss and waste; Provide multi-agency advisory and technical assistance
for work on food loss and waste at the request of governments.
The Platform builds on and
complements existing mechanisms, such as the Global Community of Practice
on Food Loss Reduction, run jointly out of Rome by FAO, the International Fund
for Agricultural Development and the World Food Programme as well as
the World Resources Institute’s Food Loss and Waste Protocol.
It also expands on the work done by
the SAVE FOOD Network, as well as the IFPRI-led CGIAR Research
Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM), which includes an
initiative on food loss and waste under a larger portfolio of value chain
studies.
Fighting hunger by saving food
Around 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger.
Undernutrition remains widespread with some two billion people lacking
essential nutrients like iron, zinc and vitamin A. Juxtaposing this is the rise
of overweight and obesity, especially in middle-income countries.
Food is lost when it is spoilt or
spilled before reaching the final product or retail stage. It is wasted when it
spoils during retailing or is discarded by consumers. Most food loss takes
place in post-production, harvesting, transportation and storage and is
primarily related to inadequate infrastructure in developing countries. On the
other hand, food waste is a problem in the marketing and
consumption stages in developed countries.
IFPRI studies have found that
infrastructure development is essential to achieve lower post-harvest food
loss. Cutting food loss, however, is not a low-cost alternative to achieving
food security and nutrition. Rather, large-scale reduction in post-harvest food
loss requires public and private investments and also supports the long-term
productivity growth which contributes to food security.
FAO estimates that over 40 percent
of root crops, fruits and vegetables are lost or wasted, along with 35 percent
of fish, 30 percent of cereals and 20 percent of oilseeds, meat, and dairy
products. Total food waste represents an economic value of some $1 trillion
annually.
FAO studies have also shown that
food wastage is responsible for the release of billions of tons of greenhouse
gases into the atmosphere, consuming some 250 km3 of water and 1.4 billion
hectares of land each year.
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