Survey on current research and/or activities on food losses and/or waste worldwide
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) commissioned study "Global Food Losses and Food Waste" roughly one third or 1.3 billion tons of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year gets lost or wasted:
- Industrialized and developing countries dissipate roughly the same quantities of food — respectively 670 and 630 million tons;
- Every year, consumers in rich countries waste almost as much food (222 million tonnes) as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tonnes);
- Fruits and vegetables, plus roots and tubers have the highest wastage rates of any food;
- The amount of food lost or wasted every year is equivalent to more than half of the world's annual cereals crop (2.3 billion tonnes in 2009/2010).
FAO, within its new Food Loss Reduction Strategy, started “The global initiative on food loss and waste reduction” entitled SAVE FOOD that includes actions such as:
- detailed food loss assessments and solution finding;
- awareness creation on food losses and waste, information dissemination, and regional Save Food congresses.
SAVE FOOD is a joint campaign in partnership with Interpack/ Messe Düsseldorf (Germany) to fight global food losses and waste. “Save Food” aims at networking stakeholders in industry, politics and research, encouraging dialogue and helping to develop solutions along the food value chain. FAO welcomes more partners to join the “Save Food Initiative” and support its programme.
We invite you to fill in the Questionnaire on current research and/ or activities on food losses and/ or waste world-wide. The resulting database will support a global perspective on food loss and waste re-search and activities and provide participants with the possibility of having on line access to it in order to further develop their research and/ or activities. Please feel free to share the public link with colleagues or other interested parties.
Please do not hesitate to contact us for further details at: [email protected]
Robert van Otterdijk
Team Leader, Working Group on Food Losses and Food waste
Agriculture and Consumer Protection Department
Rural Infrastructure and Agro-Industries Division
Agro-Food Industries Group
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, Rome, Italy
Tel. +39 06 570 53674
Web: www.fao.org/ag/ags/ags-division/en