Innovations to Reduce Food Lost

Every year, about 1/3 of the food produced for human consumption gets lost, counting for 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Developing countries post-harvest loss is impacting directly safe and nutritious food availability for human consumption while urban areas globally are challenged with addressing food waste prevention and reduction. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)’s expert panel addressed Promotion of urban food security and nutrition through redistribution of food at risk of loss or waste. The panel presented the voluntary definition of recovery and redistribution of safe and nutritious food for human consumption, context based solutions and practical examples at local, regional and global level.

So where is food being lost?  It is difficult to measure exactly how much food people, retailers, and restaurants are throwing away without going through everyone’s garbage, so USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) developed the Loss-Adjusted Food Availability Data (LAFA) Series, which gives a proxy for consumption and loss for over 200 types of food at the retail and consumer levels.

Food can also be lost on the farm when farmers don’t have adequate storage facilities to hold their freshly harvested food.

Scientists are also working on ways to keep foods from going bad when they are on grocery store shelves, for example by increasing fresh-cut vegetable shelf-life.