Q&A: Seeking Solutions to a $1.2 Trillion Problem: Food Loss and Waste

Q. What do people need to understand about solutions to food loss and waste?

A. People may know that between 30 percent and 40 percent of food produced goes uneaten. But a one-sized fits all approach to reduce losses and waste will not work at scale. In fact, interventions to address losses and waste are highly specific to government policy priorities, commodities analyzed, and the structure of the economy.

Q. What concrete steps can the world take to get a grip on the problem?

A. New World Bank research shows that policymakers can use food loss and waste reduction as an opportunity to achieve critical policy goals related to food security, farmer income, trade, greenhouse gasses, and natural resource use. Beyond identifying a menu of potential interventions that are technically and politically feasible, financial and economic analyses of the interventions must also be conducted. Developing sources of financing and financial instruments to support private and public FLW reduction action, including support for research and knowledge-based organizations, will also be key to seeing action on the ground.

Q. What is the World Bank doing to fight food loss and waste, and who are the Bank's partners?

A. The Bank's program on food loss and waste reduction has three prongs:

Our new flagship report, Addressing Food Loss and Waste: A Global Problem with Local Solutions, and the underpinning economic model provide the economic drivers, incentives and disincentives that explain the issue and enable us to take steps to reduce losses and waste.

The second prong of our program is applying this global model to specific countries and commodities so that governments and financiers can take action. We call these Food Smart Country Diagnostics. For select commodities in a given country, the diagnostics identify the hotspots of where losses occur along the value chain, use the model to understand the impact of addressing losses against other competing policy objectives (like food security, trade, poverty, etc.), and provide appropriate policy and financing interventions. We have completed four thus far, for Guatemala, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Vietnam and will be developing several more.

The final prong of our program is related to investments and financing. We know that public financing alone cannot solve the challenge of food loss and waste. The World Bank issued the first Sustainable Development Bond highlighting food loss and waste in March of 2019, and since then has raised over $2 billion through many transactions from a diverse set of investors. We are in the process of developing other innovative financing instruments to drive much needed capital toward solutions on the ground.

We can't do all of this work alone! We have been working with many partners who are key to success at a global scale, including WRAP, Cornell University, Rockefeller Foundation, FAO, IFPRI, World Wildlife Fund, Rabobank, WRI, and the Dutch government.