SUSTAINABILITY

Food waste.  On October 10 and 11, the first Latin American Summit on Food Loss and Waste, organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), took place in Bogotá. Local governments, representatives of the food industry, academics and delegates from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and Uruguay participated in the event. The summit served as a space for dialogue on the subject between the public and private sectors, where consensus was sought for implementing a future agenda to reduce food waste in the region.

According to FAO studies, the loss and waste of food impacts the sustainability of food systems. As such, a recommendation from the Summit was to promote sustainable food systems by making relevant processes and the participation of various actors more efficient in order to generate more equitable results and benefits.

At the event, the words of IDB representative Rafael de la Cruz were especially damning: “if we stop wasting 127 million tons of food in the region, we could cover the food needs of 85% of the 42 million Latin Americans who suffer from hunger each year”.

Next steps

Following the first Latin American Summit on Food Loss and Waste, it is hoped that the countries of the region will begin to promote bills in this area at the national level. For example, Colombia, which hosted the Summit, will advance in the coming months in implementing its recently sanctioned 1990 law which creates a national policy against the loss and waste of food.