Anthony
Nwakaegho/NaijaAgroNet
The Director-General,
Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), José Graziano da Silva has advocated
for innovative thinking to keep retailers and individual households from
throwing away food in order to speed up efforts to eliminate hunger globally, NaijaAgroNet reports.
Graziano da Silva told participants at the Global Green Growth
Forum (3GF) in Copenhagen that FAO estimates
shows that each year, one-third of about 1.3 billion tons food produced for
human consumption is lost or wasted and stressed that this lost or wasted food
costs around 750 billion dollars, about N119,
557,350,388,487.12 annually and if reduced to zero would give additional
food to feed two billion people.
According to him most
food loss takes place in post-production, harvesting, transportation and
storage, and is primarily related to inadequate infrastructure in developing countries,
while food waste is largely a problem in the marketing and consumption stages
in more developed countries.
"One
of my priorities in FAO is opening our doors to potential allies. Fighting food
loss and waste is clearly one area in which partnership is needed. Developing a
global protocol can help provide clear measurements and indicators on which we
can base guidance on how to reduce food loss and waste.
“Zeroing
food loss and waste is one of the elements of the Zero Hunger Challenge
launched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the Rio+20 Conference last
year. Because of all this, FAO has a huge vested interest in bringing about
rapid reductions in food losses and waste," FAO Director said.
NaijaAgroNet recorded that FAO launched the SAVE
FOOD initiative
together with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Messe Dusseldorf while more than 150
public organizations and private sector partners are currently conducting case
studies on food losses in specific chains that will help give guidance on
strategies to upgrade the sectors concerned.
The
organization also collaborates with UNEP, Waste and Resources Action
Programme (WRAP) and other partners in the Think.Eat.Save campaign
designed to target and change wasteful practices, especially at the retail and
consumer end of the food-supply chain.
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