The Near East and North Africa region loses and wastes a significant amount of food, estimated at up to 250 kg per person at a cost of over $60 billion dollars annually. These high levels of food losses and waste reduce food availability, aggravate water scarcity, adversely impact the environment, and increase the need for food imports in an already highly import-dependent region. Reducing food losses and waste is critical for countries which face limitations in increasing food production, and who depend on food imports to meet their food needs, such as the case for the majority of countries in the region. The region’s governments have heightened their commitment to tackling the problem and have requested FAO’s support in reducing food losses and waste by 50% over a ten year period. In response, FAO has developed a “Regional Strategic Framework for Food Losses and Waste Reduction” to respond to the major challenges in the region, and provide a launching point for action and, in response to requests from Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Lebanon, has also developed a sub regional project aimed at specifically building capacity in food handling, transportation, processing, storage and distribution. The project “Capacity Building for Food Loss Reduction in the Middle East” will implement a large scale educational training program over the course of 24 months, including food loss prevention curricula and guidelines, and a series of capacity development workshops for leaders in the food distribution and processing sectors, agri-business managers, and extension agents. On September 29th and 30th, 2014, FAO will come together with the partners to set the basis for a collaborative workshop including all four countries. The project has been developed within the framework of the FAO regional initiative for “building resilience to enhance food security and nutrition”. The initiative aims to support countries address the acute vulnerabilities, shocks and stresses they are facing through building resilient food security and nutrition institutions, markets and production systems.