Food waste or food loss is food that is discarded or lost or

uneaten. The two are similar, but have key distinctions within their
defi nitions. The causes of food waste or loss are numerous, and
occur at the stages of production, processing, retailing and
consumption.

Roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year
approximately 1.3 billion tonnes gets lost or wasted.

Food losses and waste amounts to roughly US$ 680 billion in industrialized countries and US$
310 billion in developing countries.

The global volume of food wasted per year is estimated to be 1.3 Gtonnes. This can be compared
to the total agricultural production (for food and non-food uses such as textile fibers, energy crops
of medicinal plants), which is about 6 Gtonnes.

Where and how food wastage occurs mostly?

Wastage happens at all steps of production, handling, storage, processing, distribution and

consumption, Agricultural production being responsible for the greatest amount of total food
wastage volumes, with 33% of the total.
Wastage occurring at consumption level is much more variable, with wastage in middle and highincome regions at 3139%, but much lower in low-income regions, at 416%.

What is the impact of food wastage on greenhouse

gas emission and climate?

Without accounting for GHG emissions from land use change, the carbon footprint of food
produced and not eaten is estimated to 3.3 Gtonnes of CO 2-equivalent. For a sense of scale,
when considering the total emissions by country, only the USA and China are responsible for
more emissions.

What is the water footprint related to food wastage?

Globally, the consumption of surface and groundwater resources of food wastage (the so called

blue water footprint) is about 250 km, which is equivalent to 3.6 times consumption of the USA
for the same period.
Animal products have, in general, a larger water footprint per tonne of product than crops. This
is one of the reasons why it appears more efficient to obtain calories, protein and fat through crop
products than through animal products.

What is the impact of food wastage on land use?

At world level, the total amount of food wastage in 2007 represented the production of 1.4 billion
hectares of land, equal to about 30 % of the worlds agricultural land area, and larger than the
surface of Canada. Low-income regions account for about two-thirds of this total. The major
contributors to land occupation are meat and dairy products, with 78 % of the total, whereas their
contribution to total food wastage is 11%.

Land degradation is also an important factor of food wastage. Most of the food wastage at the
agricultural production stage is in regions there is land degradation or where the soil is already in
poor shape, thus adding undue pressure on the land.

What is the impact of food wastage on biodiversity?

Agricultural production, in particular food crops, is responsible for 66 % of threats to species in

terrestrial systems.
In the case of marine biodiversity, countries are fishing down the food chain, with fish catches
increasingly consisting of smaller fish that are lower in the food chain, and at a higher rate than
the ability of the fish stocks to renew. Any waste depletes the resources even faster.

What is the economic impact of food wastage?

On a global scale, about USD 750 billion worth of food was wasted in 2007, the equivalent of the
GDP of Turkey or Switzerland, and this value is a low estimate since it mainly considers producer
prices and not the value of the end product.