There has been much coverage of food waste in the media recently.  This has been enhanced further by the launch of a high profile global campaign at the Davos World Economic Forum to halve current levels of global food waste by 2030.  This coalition is headed by the CEO of Tescos and includes other leaders from businesses (for example Nestlé and Unilever), Governments, UN agencies and NGOs.

But why do these business leaders see this issue as such a priority? 

The scale of the food waste is immense: if food waste were a country the emissions associated with it would rival those of the European Community. Although there are no precise estimates of global food waste, somewhere in the region of 30% to 40% of global food production is wasted.

The UN’s goal is to achieve a 50% reduction by 2030, which is what the Davos initiative will contribute towards achieving. As it is a global target, these efforts will need to prioritise where food is most wasted, from farm to fork, across different parts of the globe.

In developing countries this will require much more attention to on-farm losses, particularly in relation to small-holder farmers that account for the majority of the world’s agricultural production. For affluent nations, more of the food waste is associated with consumers not eating it in time or choosing not to, for a complex range of reasons. Despite this ‘global north / south’ difference of emphasis, all stages of the food supply chain have a part to play in delivering change.

The issue of global food waste is often discussed in relation to the impending Malthusian style catastrophe of not having enough to feed the 9.7 billion citizens of the world by 2050.  It is no longer an option to narrow the gap between supply and demand by bringing more land into agricultural production. Future improvements in crop yields between now and 2050 would struggle to match the improvements already made over the last forty years. Furthermore, the challenges of climate change, water and energy scarcity will add to the urgency for new thinking rather than ‘more of the same’.

In the early 19^th century Thomas Malthus would have had great difficulty imagining the world that we now have where a third of food is produced but not eaten, or where a third of global grain is used to feed animals.

The prevention of food waste makes good business sense. Although no business sets out to produce waste, the full costs to businesses are often masked by key commercial drivers that determine performance. With margins in the sector incredibly tight: this is one of the few areas where improvements can and have been made.
The drive to develop more efficient supply chains, of which food waste reduction is a component is therefore key.

A word of warning for the coalition, targets are not met unless they are also measured.
In 1974 the first World Food Conference set a target to reduce global food waste by 50% by 1985. There is however no record of progress made nor how it was measured. Since then efforts have been made to develop standard approaches to measuring & defining food waste, such as the World Resources Institute Food Loss and Waste Protocol. There are however now many more resources available for businesses wanting to measure and act on food waste.

To discuss food waste prevention, reporting or policy work, you can contact Julian Parfitt, Resource Policy Advisor & Practice Leader.