Food losses during the post-harvest period and food waste in the consumption level are growing in Bangladesh due to the absence of adequate food processing plants and a lack of push for recycling wasted food in the food-starved country.
The World Bank has recently revealed that one-third of all food produced is lost in Bangladesh, causing an enormous cost, equivalent to over 4 per cent of the gross domestic product which is more than $450 billion.
Food losses account for 13 per cent of the country鈥檚 greenhouse gas emissions and reduce the productivity of a quarter of its arable land, said the WB report titled 鈥楩ood loss and waste diagnostic in Bangladesh鈥�.
Agriculture experts said that the growing food losses could be minimised only by promoting small-, medium- and large-scale agro-processing initiatives across the country and earning capacity of food waste recycling, a new global trend to reducing food losses in achieving the target of zero hunger of the sustainable development goals.
They said that the country鈥檚 departmental shops had been flooded with imported canned juice of pineapples and tomatoes while local farmers were forced to dump their tomatoes in the peak harvest season due to a lack of processing plants.
鈥業t鈥檚 disappointing that local consumers buy imported jackfruit chips in the country despite being one of the top growers of the fruit,鈥� said professor Md Kamrul Hassan, who teaches horticulture at Bangladesh Agricultural University.
In 2021, Kamrul led a study that suggested that the post-harvest losses of agricultural produce were substantial across the selected value chains and ranged from 12-32 per cent irrespective of food groups.
The study titled 鈥楨stimation of overall food losses and waste at all levels of the food chain鈥� was conducted by the BAU horticulture department.
In the case of cereals, the average paddy loss was 23-28 per cent, including 17.80 per cent incurred during the post-harvest period, the study found.
On Wednesday, the government approved import of 1 lakh tonnes of rice from Myanmar and the United Arab Emirates as part of its decision to import 9 lakh tonnes in total for the 2025-26 financial year to help stabilise domestic prices.
The post-harvest losses of mangoes were 22.3 per cent, bananas 20.3 per cent, potatoes 14.8 per cent, carrots 20.6 per cent and tomatoes 27.8 per cent, said the BAU report.
According to agriculture experts, the country has about 400 cold storages, but the majority of them are used for storing potatoes.
Only a few small cold storages are dedicated to other items like fish, fruits and spices, which cannot check the waste of locally produced food items.
The waste occurs amid growing imports by the local businesses on the back of high demand from middle-class consumers, urbanisation and lifestyle changes.
Bangladesh spent $2 billion to import consumer-oriented products in 2022, compared with $1.5 billion in 2018, according to a United States Department of Agriculture report released in January 2024.
Maintenance of cold chain and investment in the food processing by micro entrepreneurs can check the growing import as well as food losses and waste, said senior scientific officer Md Golam Ferdous Chowdhury of the postharvest technology division under the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute.
But investment on food processing and cold chain system is negligible, he said.
Almost all investment on the country鈥檚 agriculture sector is limited to production, said Golam Ferdous.
Food recycling with traditional methods like composting and animal feeding along with emerging industrial solutions like biogas production and the production of biodiesel from used cooking oil have not been developed in Bangladesh like the other countries despite growing food waste in the consumption level.
Bangladesh suffered food waste of 82 kilograms a person, according to the Food Waste Index Report 2024 by the United Nations Environment Programme.
The rate is higher than rich countries, including the United States at 73 kilograms, the Netherlands at 59 kilograms and Japan 60 kilograms.聽聽聽
Bangladesh鈥檚 food waste was 61 kilograms a person in 2021.
The food waste has been defined by the United Nations Environment Programme as food and the associated inedible parts removed from the human food supply chain.
Centre for Policy Dialogue executive director Fahmida Khatun said that promotion of the private sector by providing incentives and easy access to bank loans were imperative to address the food losses and waste and improve the country鈥檚 food security.
The insufficient food security left 12 per cent poor skipping meals and nearly 9 per cent passing a day without food, said the survey findings released by the Power and Participation Research Centre, a research and policy advocacy organisation, in August 2025.
Bangladesh鈥檚 position in the Global Hunger Index 2024 slipped by three notches particularly reflecting the country鈥檚 lack of progress in reducing undernourishment and child stunting.
The country secured 84th position among 127 nations in the GHI 2024 with an overall score of 19.4 based on the data from 2019 to 2023.
