For more Information, please consult the Full Text : Food waste harms climate, water, land and biodiversity - – new FAO report

 

 

Direct economic costs of $750 billion annually – Better policies required, and “success stories” need to be scaled up and replicated

 

Rome (Italy) - 11 September 2013 - New FAO report that the waste of a staggering 1.3 billion tonnes of food per year is not only causing major economic losses but also wreaking significant harm on the natural resources that humanity relies upon to feed itself.

 

 

The Study on Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on Natural Resources is the first one to analyze the impacts of global food wastage from an environmental perspective, looking specifically at its consequences for the climate, water and land use, and biodiversity.

 

 

Among its key findings: Each year, food that is produced but not eaten guzzles up a volume of water equivalent to the annual flow of Russia's Volga River and is responsible for adding 3.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases to the planet's atmosphere.

 

 

The FAO’report estimates that beyond its environmental impacts, the direct economic consequences to producers of food wastage (excluding fish and seafood) run to the tune of $750 billion annually, FAO's report estimates.


 

 

As a companion to its new study, FAO has also published a comprehensive "tool-kit" that contains recommendations on how food loss and waste can be reduced at every stage of the food chain.

 

 

The tool-kit profiles a number of projects around the world that show how national and local governments, farmers, businesses, and individual consumers can take steps to tackle the problem.

 

 

To be found in the Report….

 

(1) Where wastage happens: Fifty-four percent of the world's food wastage occurs "upstream" during production, post-harvest handling and storage -  Forty-six percent of it happens "downstream," at the processing, distribution and consumption stages.

As a general trend, developing countries suffer more food losses during agricultural production, while food waste at the retail and consumer level tends to be higher in middle- and high-income regions - The later a food product is lost along the chain, the greater the environmental consequences –

 

 

(2) Hot spots
: Several world food wastage "hot-spots" stand out in the study:

Wastage of cereals in Asia  - While meat wastage volumes in all world regions is comparatively low, the meat sectorgenerates a substantial impact  -  large volumes of vegetable wastage in industrialized Asia, Europe, and South and South East Asia translates into a large carbon footprint for that sector.

 

(3) Causes of food wastage - and options for addressing them
: High priority should be given to reducing food wastage in the first place - re-use within the human food  - recycling and recovery chain—

 

 

Read in more detail about FAO's specific recommendations for reducing food wastage.

 

 

Funding for the Food Wastage Footprint report and toolkit was provided by the government of Germany.

 

 

For more Information, please consult the Full Text : Food waste harms climate, water, land and biodiversity - – new FAO report

 

 

To read :

businessconnectworld: Five Ways Wasting Food Hurts the Environment (and Five Ways To Fix It)