Global food losses and food waste: extent, causes and prevention.

This publication is based on studies carried out from August 2010 to January 2011 by The Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology (SIK) on request from the FAO. The two studies on global food losses (one for high/medium-income countries and one for low income countries) have been carried out to serve as a basis for the international congress Save Food!, 16-17 May 2011, at the international packaging industry fair Interpack2011 in Dusseldorf, Germany. The study highlights the losses occurring along the entire food chain, and makes assessments of their magnitude. Further, it identifies causes of food losses and possible ways of preventing them. The results suggest that roughly one-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally, which amounts to about 1.3 billion tons per year. This inevitably also means that huge amounts of the resources used in food production are used in vain, and that the greenhouse gas emissions caused by production of food that gets lost or wasted are also emissions in vain.