Our food system is sick and needs to be cured. One of its remedies is to explore the ways how to prevent and reduce enormous food waste that humanity produces nowadays. Best food waste is no food waste. It is evident that current food supply chains are notoriously inefficient and show vulnerabilities from initial agriculture production down to the final household consumption. These inefficiencies have global unprecedented significant social, environmental and economic impacts. At European level food waste accounts to 88 million tonnes annually and associated estimated economic costs of 143 billion euros. Food losses and waste represent a waste of resources used in production such as land, water, energy and inputs. Considering facts such as:
– an increase in the food demand for food by 70% by 2050;
– a 6% decrease in crops efficiency due to climate change;
– the consideration of the agri-food system as the largest contributor of greenhouse gases;
– agriculture using 70% of all water.
Based on this, the core commitment of the twenty-first century is to do our outmost to prevent and reduce food losses and food waste. The goal 12.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), unanimously adopted by world leaders in September 2015, targets to halve per capita food waste at the retail and consumer level by 2030 and reduce food losses along the food production and supply chains. We are far behind with achieving this goal and there is an urgent need to do more, in better ways and multiple possible ways.
Global average annual increase of total food production in the five past decades was 122 MMT (FAOSTAT). A 20% reduction of the 1,3 billion tonnes of food lost would mean 260 million tons saved annually. Alarming fact is that household produces more than half of the total food waste/loss. From this point of view, it is critical to adapt also the eating habits of consumers to achieve the prevention and reduction of the food losses and food waste. Awareness campaigns are not enough in this regard. New ways of using safe food currently thrown away need to be further explored.
Following these reasoning, these specific objectives of the FoodConcept have been set up:
– To promote efficiency in the use of resources throughout all stages of the food chain from farm/shop to household/restaurant consumption. – To promote and foster long term behavioural changes to increase understanding of food losses and food waste.
The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
