Responds to call by G20 agriculture ministers to tackle this global problem

Figure: Rotten food in a market place: one third of global food is wasted annually.

FAO 4 December 2015, Rome – The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the CGIAR research program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) today launched a new initiative to enhance global cooperation on measuring and reducing food loss and waste. The G20 agriculture ministers requested FAO and IFPRI to launch this initiative in Istanbul, Turkey, this past May.

The Technical Platform on the Measurement and Reduction of Food Loss and Waste is an information-sharing and coordination network involving diverse stakeholders, such as international organisations, development banks, non-governmental organisations, and the private sector.

Platform partners will work together to enhance the measurement of food loss and waste, exchange knowledge and information, and share best practices to tackle the global challenges of food loss and waste.

“The G20 Platform will enhance our capacity to accurately measure food loss and waste, both in the G20 countries and in low-income countries,” said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva. “It will bring new expertise and knowledge for improving metrics.  It will also respond to countries’ need for knowledge and good practices.”

“We must coordinate global efforts to reduce food loss and waste to enhance our ability to sustainably eliminate global hunger and undernutrition,” said IFPRI Director-General Shenggen Fan. “This new platform is a critical step in this direction.”

Currently, one-third of global food production – enough food to feed two billion people for a year – is lost or wasted annually. The G20 agriculture ministers noted the significant food loss and waste throughout food value chains as “a global problem of enormous economic, environmental and societal significance”.