Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on natural resources

Land and Water Division

Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on natural resources

Technical Report

Year of publication 2013

Pages 249

Author Land and Water Division

Product type Book (stand-alone)

Edition 1

Full item page

Synopsis (short abstract) This technical report illustrated that food is lost or wasted through the supply chain, from initial agricultureal production down to final household consumption, and highlights how uneaten food has significant environmental and economic costs.

Language English

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This FAO study provides a global account of the environmental footprint of food wastage (i.e. both food loss and food waste) along the food supply chain, focusing on impacts on climate, water, land and biodiversity. A model has been developed to answer two key questions: what is the magnitude of food wastage impacts on the environment; and what are the main sources of these impacts, in terms of regions, commodities, and phases of the food supply chain involved with a view to identify en vironmental hotspots related to food wastage.
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The global economic cost of food wastage, based on 2009 producer prices, is 750 billion USD, approximately the 2011 GDP of Turkey or Switzerland. The lost grain in sub-Saharan Africa only could meet the minimum annual food requirement of 48 million people. Lost and wasted food represents a missed opportunity to feed the growing world population. It also comes at a steep environmental price, as land quality, water quantity, biodiversity are adversely affected. Wasted food also has a strong impa ct on global climate change.
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Mediterra 2016: Zero Waste in the Mediterranean. Natural Resources, Food and Knowledge 2016

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The 2016 Edition of Mediterra addresses waste challenges and presents innovative solutions while suggesting policy recommendations for the sustainable management of natural resources, food and knowledge in the Mediterranean.The first part reviews each of the resources for which waste is a real issue and calls for an analysis in the particularly constrained circumstances of the Mediterranean. The second focuses on food losses and waste (both land and sea-based), exploring both the extent of the problem and a promising pathway for improving food security and, as a spin-off, resource management. The third part concentrates on the erosion of knowhow, due to poor knowledge dissemination, exploring the risk this poses of collapsing agricultural models and the rediscovery of new systems of knowledge and innovation. While the report places the spotlight on this triple waste, it also looks carefully at the innovations and inclusive policies that are attempting to address the issue.