Santiago de Chile.- In Latin America, 11.6% of the foods in the logistics chain from its harvest to its sale, which is equivalent to 220 million tons a year, reported this Thursday the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
The organization, whose regional headquarters are located in Santiago de Chile, called on regional governments to prevent food losses and waste in a region with high levels of food insecurity and high costs of healthy diets.
“The region has one of the highest costs worldwide to access a healthy diet, exceeding 4 dollars a day,” warned the regional representative of FAO, Mario Lubetkin, during a seminar held on the International Day of Awareness of the Food Loss and Waste.
“Many of the healthy foods, such as fruits and vegetables that contribute to people’s nutrition and health, are the ones that are lost and wasted the most,” added Lubetkin.
Other organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Ministry of Agriculture of Argentina or the Parliamentary Front Against Hunger also participated in the seminar.
The number of food wasted in the region is similar to the global average: in the world, 14% of food is lost after harvest until the sale stage and 17% is wasted in retail and in homes , according to FAO.
For Jairo Flores, regional coordinator of the Parliamentary Front Against Hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean, the situation is especially worrying in a “context of the increase in the price of the food basket and fertilizers” due to inflation and the war in Ukraine.
