World wastes half its food

Biopact: …[T]he bioenergy debate is not about a lack of resources (land, water), but about the way in which production chains are optimised and waste streams reduced. A new report by the Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), and Stockholm Water Management Institute (SIWI), shows indeed that the world produces more than enough food to sustain the global population, but warns that a staggering half of all this food is currently wasted. And so is the water needed to produce it. The good thing about these dramatic findings is that there is ample room for a variety of waste-reduction strategies.

According to Saving Water: From Field to Fork - Curbing Losses and Wastage in the Food Chain [*.pdf], tremendous amounts of food, and thus water, are discarded in the fields, during processing, in transport, in supermarkets, restaurants and in people's kitchens. Jan Lundqvist, who heads the scientific programme at SIWI, says the losses of all the food that farmers grow is an incredible 50 percent on a global scale….