More than $600 billion worth of food is lost or wasted each year during or just after harvest, representing 33-40% of the world’s food.
Food loss occurs at or shortly after harvest, while food waste occurs after food reaches the retailer or consumer.
This follows from an investigation carried out by McKinsey & Company – a global strategic consultancy – which adds that food loss is the result of inefficiencies, and its hidden costs are often equal to or greater than the net profit of retailers, even those of better performance.
But beyond the consequences of food loss, the secondary effects are also significant: water consumption related to food loss and waste amounts to about a quarter of the world’s freshwater supply. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from food loss and waste make up 8% of the global total, or at least four times that of the aviation industry.
Reducing food loss is feasible
The research shows that food manufacturers and retailers, because they are at the center of the food value chain, are in a unique position to lead global efforts to reduce food loss. Working together and with all participants in the value chain, they could reduce food loss by between 50 and 70%, that is, two thirds of the food that would otherwise be lost could be redirected to human consumption; the remaining third would go to alternative uses, such as bio-based materials or animal feed.
The study shows that retailers could reduce their cost of goods sold (COGS) between 3 to 6%, manufacturers between 5 to 10%. Grocers and manufacturers could capture $80 billion in potential new markets by building new business from food that would otherwise be lost. And they could reduce CO 2 emissions and associated costs by between 4 and 9%.
More than two billion tonnes of food is lost or wasted each year, about half of this occurs upstream: during the harvest, post-harvest handling and storage, and processing stages.
Although meat and dairy products have a high environmental impact per unit produced (it takes more than 1,000 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef, for example), meat accounts for only about 3 percent of energy loss. foods; dairy another 5 percent. Three other food categories (fruits and vegetables, cereals, and roots and tubers) account for much of the food loss and associated CO 2 emissions and water use. Therefore, those categories should be the focus of loss reduction efforts.
McKinsey research revealed that some food losses are due to exogenous factors, such as weather events, or suboptimal practices within a specific stage of the supply chain, such as equipment maintenance, but some losses are linked to interdependencies and interactions. between the actors in the chain.
