![]() There are also moral and economic dimensions: the extent to which available food crops are used to meet global human needs directly, or diverted into feeding livestock, other ‘by-products’ and biofuels or biomaterials production. Unlike most other commodity flows, food is biological material subject to degradation, and different food stuffs have different nutritional values. Food waste occurs at different points in the FSC, although it is most readily defined at the retail and consumer stages, where outputs of the agricultural system are self-evidently ‘food’ for human consumption. The analyses highlighted the scale of the problem, the scope for improved system efficiencies and the challenges of affecting behavioural change to reduce post-consumer waste in affluent populations.Īlthough waste is formally defined in different legal jurisdictions, definitions relate to particular points of arising and are often framed in relation to specific environmental controls. To supplement the fragmentary picture and to gain a forward view, interviews were conducted with international FSC experts. For affluent economies, post-consumer food waste accounts for the greatest overall losses. The limited data suggest that losses are much higher at the immediate post-harvest stages in developing countries and higher for perishable foods across industrialized and developing economies alike. A significant gap exists in the understanding of the food waste implications of the rapid development of ‘BRIC’ economies. As much of the post-harvest loss data for developing countries was collected over 30 years ago, current global losses cannot be quantified. An international literature review found a dearth of data on food waste and estimates varied widely those for post-harvest losses of grain in developing countries might be overestimated. Different definitions of food waste with respect to the complexities of food supply chains (FSCs)are discussed. Food waste in the global food supply chain is reviewed in relation to the prospects for feeding a population of nine billion by 2050.
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