Mitigation of food wastage: societal costs and benefits

In recent years, progress has been made globally in establishing sustainable food production systems aimed at improving food and nutrition security and the judicial use of natural resources. Yet, all of those efforts are in vain when the food produced in those systems is lost or wasted and never consumed. As food wastage increases in parallel with production increases, it becomes even more important to recognize that reducing food wastage must be part of any effort aimed at sustainable production and food security. In addition to this, there also are environmental repercussions, including all of the natural resources used and greenhouse gases emitted during the production or disposal of food that is not consumed. Analysis of food wastage causalities suggests that it is economically rational to loose food as part of the costs are externalized, and incentives to producers and consumers along the supply chain further encourages not taking into account negative externalities such as environmental costs. However, food wastage has huge environmental impacts and corresponding societal costs that need to be dealt with. Mitigation of this wastage must become a priority for each actor along the food chain. This paper presents a portfolio of potential food wastage mitigation measures, illustrating the gross and net economic, environmental and societal benefits of each. Adopting appropriate food wastage mitigation measures can offer corresponding huge environmental benefits, leading to associated net gains for societies in terms of reduced economic losses and external costs. The performance of measures aiming at avoiding food wastage tends to be higher than for reusing, recycling of food products and certainly higher than landfilling