This post is the third installment of WRI’s blog series,“创造可持续的食品未来。”The series explores strategies to sustainably feed 9 billion people by 2050. All pieces are based on research being conducted for the2013-2014 World Resources Report.

很棒24％of all food calories produced today go uneaten. Reducing this loss and waste is a critical step towardgenerating enough food到2050年，人口将超过90亿。

幸运的是，有一些低成本的方法可以立即开始在发展中国家和发达国家中节省食物。WRI的新工作文件，减少粮食损失和浪费, identifies a number of these strategies. Some methods cut loss “close to the farm,” while others reduce waste “close to the fork.”

Reducing Food Loss Close to the Farm

Improved storage methods

简单，低成本的存储方法可以大大减少食品损失，尤其是对于发展中国家的小型农民，他们经常因害虫，变质和运输损害而损失食物。例如，普渡大学的研究人员开发的系统，其中谷物存储在三个互锁的塑料袋中，将害虫锁定在几个月中。在16个不同的国家 /地区，食品和农业组织已经建造了45,000多个小型金属存储筒仓（仅足以由单个农民使用）。这些孤岛在存储阶段的食物损失几乎为零。即使在运输过程中使用塑料箱而不是塑料袋，也可以通过防止瘀伤和挤压来大大减少损失。

Redistribute food

Some perfectly good food just never gets eaten. It might be because a farmer can’t afford to harvest an entire field, or because a grocer has ordered too much of an item and can’t sell it all. One way to reduce this type of food loss and waste is to simply redistribute food by giving it to food banks and similar outreach groups. An Australian organization called第二咬例如，在2012年将价值3,000公吨的社区食品银行重定向，否则将被扔掉。

减少靠近叉子的食物浪费

Better food date labels

围绕“使用”，“卖出”，“最好的”和其他日期标签的混乱，可能会导致人们扔掉仍然非常好吃的食物。例如，一项调查由Waste and Resources Action Programme(WRAP) in the United Kingdom found that one-fifth of food thrown out by households was incorrectly perceived as being out of date due to confusing labels.

Retailers can alleviate confusion by removing certain date labels, such as “sell-by” dates in the United States, which only convey information to the retailer. Tesco, for example, has piloted a program in which “display until” dates are removed from packages, leaving only a “use by” date. The grocer found that this change has been well-received by customers and also leads to less waste at the store level.

减少份量

餐馆和自助餐的巨大尺寸可能会导致大量食物浪费，因为人们无法完成订购的餐点。餐馆可以通过提供较小尺寸的菜单项来减少这种浪费以及自己的运营成本。

There are also some more creative ways to cut this type of waste. For example, Michigan’s Grand Valley State University introduced a tray-less system in its cafeterias. Because students could no longer load up trays with food, the University found that over the course of a year, each student was wasting about 56 pounds of food fewer than the year before, or about 28,000 fewer pounds overall.

Launch consumer awareness campaigns

消费者意识运动揭示了人们实际浪费了多少食物，并提供了减少浪费的简单解决方案。杂货商可以参与这些计划。例如，由合作集团在英国的合作集团在其塑料袋上直接在英国的水果和蔬菜的印刷存储提示。诸如地方政府和社区团体赞助的烹饪课程和信息显示之类的举措还可以为消费者提供有助于减少浪费的信息。

5 Cross-cutting Ways to Prevent Food Loss and Waste

Although these initiatives can all help reduce food loss and waste immediately and cost-effectively, the global community will also need to take some bigger, cross-cutting steps to tackle this issue. WRI’s新工作文件identifies five key recommendations:

  1. 制定粮食损失和废物测量协议: What gets measured gets managed. A global “food loss and waste protocol” could provide companies and countries with a standardized way to measure and monitor food loss and waste.
  2. Set food loss and waste reduction targets: Setting time-bound targets inspires action by raising awareness, focusing attention, and mobilizing resources. Targets at the global, national, sub-national, and business levels will help spur action on reducing food loss and waste. For example, the European Union has announced a target of reducing food loss and waste by 50 percent by 2050.
  3. Increase investment in reducing post-harvest losses in developing countries：发展中国家的大量粮食损失“靠近农场”，但只有约5％的农业研究资金用于最大程度地减少收获后的损失。将这笔资金增加一倍将是朝着正确方向迈出的重要一步。
  4. 创建致力于减少发达国家食物浪费的实体:WRAPis a good model of this sort of entity. The organization is independent of the national government, but works closely with business and governments on waste reduction. For example, it works with manufacturers to minimize waste during factory processes, convenes voluntary agreements with grocery retailers to reduce in-store waste, and conducts consumer awareness campaigns to educate the public about household food waste.
  5. 加速并支持协作计划，以减少粮食损失和浪费：诸如Save Food and Think.eat.save之类的国际举措汇集了众多参与者，例如私人企业，政府和政府间组织，以解决粮食损失和浪费。这些举措为鼓舞人心的行动，有效的协作和分享最佳实践提供了一个空间。

A War on Food Waste and Loss

到2050年，世界will need about 60 percent more calories per yearin order to feed 9 billion people. Cutting current food loss and waste levels in half would收缩这个食物差距的大小by 22 percent.

在1970年代，世界面临着能源危机。面对创纪录的石油价格和需求不断增长，几个工业化国家基本上宣布了浪费能量的战争，从而大大提高了其能源效率。在食物方面，尚未发动“浪费战”。鉴于食品价格已经达到历史最高点，全球需求持续上升，现在是时候开始了slashing food waste and loss.