Food waste reduction could help feed world's starving

One third of all food produced is wasted, the UN estimates

"If food was as expensive as a Ferrari, we would polish it and look after it."

Instead, we waste staggering amounts.

So says Professor Per Pinstrup-Andersen, head of an independent panel of experts advising the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization on how to tackle the problem.

Some 40% of all the food produced in the United States is never eaten. In Europe, we throw away 100 million tonnes of food every year.

And yet there are one billion starving people in the world.

The FAO's best guess is that one third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted before it is eaten.

Food waste

33%

of all food is wasted
$750bn

cost of waste food

• 28% of farmland grows food that will be thrown away
• 6-10% of greenhouse gases come from waste food
• 39% of household food waste is fruit and vegetables

Source: UN/FAO

SPL

The latest report from the expert panel of the UN Committee on World Food Security concludes that food waste happens for many different reasons in different parts of the world and therefore the solutions have to be local.

Take Chris Pawelski, a fourth generation onion farmer from the US. Mr Pawelski has spent months growing onions in the rich, black soil of Orange County, New York, but the supermarkets he sells to will only accept onions of certain size and look.

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From BBC-Busines