The world is at a critical moment in the fight against food loss and waste, with momentum building to address the 1.3 billion tons of food that is lost or wasted each year. But action is not yet at a pace needed to achieve SDG Target 12.3 by 2030.
This report identifies a three-pronged approach to halve food loss and waste by 2030. The report calls on governments, companies, farmers, consumers, and everyone in between to:
- “Target-Measure-Act”: Set food loss and waste reduction targets, measure to identify hotspots of food loss and waste and monitor progress over time, and take action on the hotspots;
- Pursue a short “to-do” list per player in the food supply chain as “no regret” first steps toward taking action; and
- Collaborate on 10 “scaling interventions” to ramp up deployment of Target-Measure-Act and the to-do list.
There are enormous benefits to reducing food loss and waste. Successfully halving food loss and waste would close the gap between food needed in 2050 and food available in 2010 by more than 20 percent. It would avoid the need to convert an area the size of Argentina into agricultural land and it would lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 1.5 gigatons per year by 2050, an amount more than the current energy and industry-related emissions of Japan.