each year 30% of global food production is lost after harvest or wasted in shops households and catering services this represents 750 billion US dollars worth of food every year and that is a producer prices at retail prices the value reaches a trillion dollars twice the GDP of Norway if nature asked us to pay the total bill for food wastage it could charge society at least another 700 billion dollars a year because that wasted food still caused greenhouse gas emissions and climate change damages used water for irrigation and increased water scarcity cleared forests and eroded land
led to loss of pollinators fishes and other biodiversity and there is more social costs worth another trillion dollars are caused by food that never added one bit of nutrition to humanity this includes pesticides impact on human health loss of livelihoods as natural resources become more scarce conflicts induced by pressure on natural resources and subsidies spent to produce food wastage but those are only the costs that can be calculated food wastage has many more costs that cannot be quantified imagine if we quantify the loss of wetlands that purify water or a biodiversity of pastures or the
value of fish discarded or the scarcity of essential agricultural inputs such as phosphorus or the increase in food prices because of less supply assigning the monetary value to environmental or social impacts will always be inexact how to value beautiful landscape or a child's health however we look at it reducing food wastage --is make sense economically environmentally and socially but not all food wastage reduction measures are equal some are better than others for nature and society reducing food loss by raising consumer awareness for investing in improved post-harvest infrastructures and reducing food loss means we avoid using
natural resources in the first place leaving them available for the next harvest for future generations who that is about to be wasted on the market can best be redirected to charities or if it is not up to human consumption then think of feeding it to livestock so that there is less need to produce animal feed when you save the fluent I've saved the resources minister produce it food waste used to produce biogas is surely a better option than dumping it in landfills but this wastage reduction measure is the least environmentally effective all food reduction measures
are different in terms of climate impact and use of water land and biodiversity reducing wastage by not creating it in the first place should be a priority for all you
