PARIS: Halving food waste could cut climate-warming emissions and end undernourishment for 153 million people globally, the OECD and the UN’s food agency said in a joint report on Tuesday (Jul 2).
Around a third of food produced for human consumption gets lost or wasted globally, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization – resulting in useless emissions and less available food for those who need it.
By 2033, the number of calories lost and wasted between produce leaving farms and reaching shops and households could be more than twice the number of calories currently consumed in low-income countries in a year, the report warned.
Cutting in two the amount of food lost and wasted along the journey from farm to fork “has the potential to reduce global agricultural greenhouse gas emissions by four percent and the number of undernourished people by 153 million by the year 2030,” according to the report.
“This target is a highly ambitious upper bound and would require substantial changes by both consumers and producer side,” they added.
Agriculture, forestry and other land use account for around one-fifth of global human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.
