Tackling Food Loss and Waste across the Food System - Karen Cooper

One third of all food produced in the world is lost or wasted. However, we don’t often hear about the effects of the high rate of food loss and waste. When food is wasted, all the greenhouse gas emissions and water that were used to create and deliver that food are also wasted. It also affects the farmers that grow the food when experiencing losses at farm level. This is turn affects the costs and availability of food, adding into inequality and undermining rural development. There are many reasons that food can be lost or wasted. Wasting food does not means only wasting money, labour and resources, but also has an impact on the environment and on nutrient losses.