Over one billion people do not have enough food to lead a healthy life. At the same time, the world’s population continues to grow; we will be eight billion by 2030. So how can we stop hunger and meet the growing global demand for safe and nutritious food?

The most commonly proposed measure to improve food security is to increase agricultural production. While this would seem the obvious solution, there are others that are just as important, and to which we should increasingly turn our attention.

One of these is to cut losses from the food production chain. My colleague Dr Matti Kummu and I have worked with colleagues from VU University Amsterdam and the University of Bonn, researching how many calories are lost globally from field to fork. We also analysed how these losses affect the use of the planet’s resources, such as freshwater, crop land and fertilisers.

The results were striking. Almost a quarter of the total calories in produced food crops is lost or wasted at different stages of the food production chain, which results in an unnecessary loss of resources. Not only food is being lost, but similarly almost one quarter of agricultural land, as well as used irrigation water and fertilisers, are being wasted. This causes a huge burden to ecosystems and economies worldwide. Feeding an additional one billion people would call for halving these losses.

Astonishingly, there is not much difference in the proportion of losses in different parts of the world. All over the planet, the losses are close to one quarter. In high-income regions such as North America, Europe and industrialised Asia, over half of the losses occur in very late parts of the chain, namely between the shop and mouth. Behavioural changes are thus crucial in cutting these losses. Earlier this year the EU launched a target to halve food losses by 2025. This is all well and good, but actions are needed – not just targets. Why not start with a full-blown campaign to raise awareness and get everybody involved?

In contrast, in low-income regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, most of the loss takes place between field and food processing. Cutting these losses should be put at the top of the food security agenda, both in African countries and by aid agencies. Of course technological progress is important, but behavioural changes equally so.

Reducing food losses and waste can thus be considered to be one of the most important measures in order to improve global food security and reduce ecosystem degradation. People should be made more aware and act more responsibly, at every stage of the supply chain – all the way from the field to the dinner table. —