In re­cent years, the pop­u­la­tion of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean has seen a wor­ry­ing in­crease in hunger fig­ures, es­pe­cial­ly among the poor­est in the re­gion, says Mario Lu­betkin, as­sis­tant di­rec­tor-gen­er­al and re­gion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions (FAO).

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Lu­betkin ex­plained, “When we talk about food in­se­cu­ri­ty in our re­gion, as in the rest of the world, we re­alise that this prob­lem does not stem from de­fi­cient food pro­duc­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to FAO es­ti­mates, the Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean could feed more than 1.3 bil­lion peo­ple, twice its pop­u­la­tion.

“Thus, where does this prob­lem arise? A rel­e­vant fac­tor in this mat­ter is food loss and waste, which pre­ven­tion is fun­da­men­tal in the de­vel­op­ment of agri-food sys­tems,” Lu­betkin said.

He ad­vised the way for­ward is to ad­dress this sit­u­a­tion as it is im­per­a­tive to work in a co-or­di­nat­ed and mul­ti-sec­toral way to achieve re­sults quick­ly.

“Gov­ern­ments, busi­ness­es, civ­il so­ci­ety and acad­e­mia must join forces, to gen­er­ate ev­i­dence, in­vest­ments in in­fra­struc­ture and tech­nol­o­gy, and oth­er mea­sures to ad­dress this sit­u­a­tion.

“Much needs to be done. Food loss and waste must be ad­dressed from an eth­i­cal, po­lit­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic per­spec­tive. We are all re­spon­si­ble for this chal­lenge,” he em­pha­sised.

Lu­betkin not­ed that ac­cord­ing to FAO fig­ures, 13 per cent of the world’s food is lost in the sup­ply chain, from post-har­vest to re­tail, and a fur­ther 17 per cent is wast­ed in house­holds, food ser­vices and re­tail.

The high­est lev­els of loss­es oc­cur in nu­tri­ent-rich foods such as fruit and veg­eta­bles (32 per cent), meat, and fish (12.4 per cent), he added.

He said in­ef­fi­cien­cies along the food chain and in con­sump­tion al­so have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment and there­fore, pre­vent­ing food loss and waste can help to com­bat hunger and the con­se­quences of cli­mate change through green­house gas emis­sions.

“Cur­rent sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence points to in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions that sup­port fam­i­ly farm­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion and sup­ply sys­tems, dri­ve cir­cu­lar bio-econ­o­my ac­tions, and tar­get in­vest­ments and fund­ing to de­vel­op mon­i­tor­ing and ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems to pre­vent food loss waste, as well as com­pre­hen­sive le­gal frame­works aimed at pre­ven­tion. But it is still not enough,” Lu­betkin added.

At the end of Au­gust, the FAO Re­gion­al Of­fice for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean or­gan­ised a dis­cus­sion on how to pre­vent and re­duce food loss­es and waste in the con­text of food se­cu­ri­ty and nu­tri­tion.

This con­ver­sa­tion ex­plored ideas and so­lu­tions to move from re­flec­tion to ac­tion and to un­der­stand that end­ing the phe­nom­e­non of food loss and waste has a di­rect im­pact on the lives of in­di­vid­u­als and so­ci­ety as a whole, Lu­betkin said.

His com­ments come in com­mem­o­ra­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Food Loss and Waste Re­duc­tion Aware­ness Day, which takes place to­mor­row.