Abstract
Food production addresses one of the most important and basic human needs and has developed in parallel with the evolution of humanity to ensure steady provision, safety and variety of food as well as improved nutritional erosion, climate change) in modern consumer demands and food export and distribution. Food Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that more than 15% of the food produced globally is lost during the post-harvest composition. The global agricultural and food industry is a $9 trillion enterprise and 10% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Global food exports totaled $1.5 trillion (World Trade Organization, WTO). Farming provides jobs for more than 1 billion people (19% of the world’s population) and in some developing and Third World countries farmers are more than 50% of the working population. Despite the adequate amounts of global food produced, statistics showed that around 700-800 million people on our planet are going hungry while 1.9 billion are suffering from the ill effects of too much food consumption leading to overweight and obesity. But global agriculture and the food industry face challenging conditions (shortage of water, droughts, soil production stage before reaching the retail stage of the food system, [FAO 2019 State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) report. Some regional losses are higher (North America and Europe) and over 20% in Central and South Asia. Food loss and waste has indeed become a global issue of great public concern to commercial agriculture. The Target 12.3 of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals calls for 50% reduction of per capita global food waste at retail and consumer levels by 2030. This review explores statistical data on the dimensions of global food loss and food waste. Food loss is widespread (on farm, as packaged food items, processed, stored, distributed and held as food produce in commercial). Also, food waste is the section of the food industry where commercial food are sold to consumer and stored, used and cooked and then is wasted in the home of the consumer. [FAO SOFA (State of Food and Agriculture, report, 2019)]. Global organizations, like UN, FAO, European Union, and World Bank, as well as national organizations have initiated in the last decade a series of initiatives and practical solutions to reduce food loss and food waste.
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