A report released by the UN food agency has revealed that a staggering 1.3 billion tonnes of food goes to waste every year and has suggested that bringing down levels of wastage in developing countries could make an ‘immediate and significant’ impression on the world’s poorer populations.

In its report, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), highlighted that as much as a third of the food produced for the purpose of human consumption across the globe is either lost or wasted on an annual basis.

Based on research conducted at the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology, the report says such losses are attributable to inefficiencies within the food supply chain, which occur at various stages depending on a country’s level of development – the most waste in the more mature of markets being at the consumer end of the equation and the losses for developing countries being more related to a lack of sufficient infrastructure, including poor processing, packaging and storage capabilities.

Food wastage represents not only a loss of income for small farmers, but also high consumer prices in developing countries, explains the report. In terms of the biggest culprits, the average consumer in Europe and North America can waste up to 115kg a year. In sub-Saharan Africa meanwhile, just 6kg-11kg of food per person is wasted, the same for south Asia and south-east Asia.

The FAO study also reveals the shocking fact that consumer food wastage across the world’s rich geographies, 222 million tonnes, roughly equates to the overall level of food production in sub-Saharan Africa, 230 million tonnes.

Posted by Hayley on the 25th May 2011