Speaking at the Green Global Growth Forum in Copenhagen, the director of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has called for 'innovative thinking' to measure and cut global food loss and waste along the food chain.

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The FAO director's calls come at a time when food waste and sustainable future food production are creeping back up the political agenda; last week, World Food Day saw events draw attention to the challenges facing food producers around the world, sustainable agriculture experts speaking in Parliament called for fundamental changes to research in the UK to drive sustainable, socially just food production, and Tesco became the first major retailer to publish informationon the amount of food its stores waste (about 300,000 tonnes in the first six months of this year alone)

Speaking at the Green Growth Forum (3GF) this week, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva told attendees that keeping track of the enormity and nature of food loss and waste is essential to reducing the problem and to speeding efforts to eliminate hunger globally. He said, "FAO estimates that each year, one-third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted - around 1.3 billion tons. This costs around 750 billion dollars annually. If we reduce food loss and waste to zero it would give us additional food to feed 2 billion people."

The EU Commission has made a commitment to reduce food waste in the bloc by half before the end of the decade, though the UK's coalition government has said this aim is unrealistic.

Graziano da Silva was attending the forum in Copenhagen to discuss plans for a new global standard for measuring food loss and waste, being unveiled by the World Resources Institute (WRI). He also unveiled plans for a Food Loss Index, to monitor food wastage and inform actions to address losses.

"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," he said.

In the Global South, most food loss occurs during production and post-harvest, whereas in the West, waste mainly occurs later on in the supply chain, part of the ill-effects of the prevalent consumerist system. Although most food loss occurs in post-production, harvesting, transportation and storage in developing countries, often related to inadequate infrastructure, waste at the processing, marketing and consumption stages of the food chain are more environmentally damaging.

Graziano da Silva said, "We already know a lot about how to cut food losses. But we need to invest more in a number of areas, especially in infrastructure such as roads and cold chains, but also improving market information. We also need to close the gap between the knowledge we have and what farmers and other actors in the food chain are actually doing. When we do that, we see good results."

On food waste that occurs at the consumer end, Graziano da Silva called for more "innovative thinking" to keep retailers and individual households from throwing away food.

"Per capita consumer waste is around 100 kilograms [per year] in Europe and North America. In Africa, it is less than 10 kilograms a year per person," he said, adding, "We can do a lot from the local to the global levels, from producers to consumers, from personal choices to policy decisions that create an enabling environment to reduce food waste and loss."

"And with regards to food waste, it is also important to take into consideration that different cultures have different culinary traditions. We must take this into consideration," he stressed.

FAO operates a number of campaigns aimed at reducing food waste around the world. The SAVE FOOD initiative, a partnership between FAO and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), launched in 2011, includes more than 150 public organizations and private sector partners and looks at waste all along the food chain. The Think.Eat.Save. campaign, run in conjunction with UNEP and WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme), aims to target and change wasteful practices, especially at the retail and consumer end of the food-supply chain.