COMCEC Agriculture Outlook 2016
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3.6. Food Losses and Wastes
According to the FAO estimation, roughly one-third of the annual global food
production, i.e., 1.3 billion tons of food, is lost in the supply chain before reaching to the final
consumer. This is equivalent to more than half of the world's annual cereals crop production.
In other words, about 24 percent of all calories which is currently produced cannot be utilized
for human consumption28. Moreover, about 350 million tons of food is wasted by consumers at
global level. This situation means that huge amounts of resources such as labor, land, water,
fertilizer, other inputs and energy are used in vain during food supply chain29.
“The decrease in edible food mass throughout the part of the supply chain that
specifically leads to edible food for human consumption30” is called food losses. Therefore, food
losses refer to pre-consumer stage losses which are the losses in production, post-harvest
handling, storage, processing, and distribution stages. The food losses caused by consumers
are called food waste, which is occurred at the end of the food chain. Food losses and waste
occurred in different stages in the supply chain are categorized and called as follows;
On-Farm Losses: Any losses in the agricultural production stage till completion of
harvesting are called on-farm losses.
Post-harvest Losses: Post-harvest losses refer to food damage or degradation of food
during the different stages such as handling, storage, processing, packaging, and distribution.
In other words, any food losses or degradation of food from the agricultural production stage
to the moment of final consumption is defined as post-harvest losses.
Food Waste: Food waste refers to consumer stage losses in food supply chain.
According to the research commissioned by FAO, the food losses occurs especially
during the early and middle stages of food supply chain, which is production and post-harvest
period in developing countries. As demonstrated in Figure 37, most of the food resources are
lost in the phases of production and handling and storage in developing countries. These losses
are mainly based on technical limitations and derived from insufficient modern harvest, post-
harvest and storage machinery and equipment 31. Food waste in developing countries are
relatively less in the developing countries since limited income and food resources do not
allow to buy large amount of food products. Therefore, consumers buy only enough food for
their own use and this situation decreases the food waste during consumption phase32.
28 Searchinger et al., 2013
29 Postharvest Education Foundation, 2013
30 FAO, 2014
31 Ibid.
32 FAO, 2011