THIS is unfortunate that food losses post harvest and food waste at consumption account for a third of all the food produced in Bangladesh, as a recent World Bank report says, when insufficient food security forces 12 per cent of the poor to skip meals and about 9 per cent of the poor to pass a day without food, as a recent Power and Participation Research Centre survey says. The World Bank report, 鈥楩ood Loss and Waste Diagnostic in Bangladesh,鈥� estimates the cost of the food losses and waste to be equivalent to 4 per cent of the gross domestic product. The report further says that food losses cause 13 per cent of Bangladesh鈥檚 greenhouse gas emissions, resulting in environmental degradation, and reduce the productivity of a quarter of its arable land, likely adding to food insecurity. The Food Waste Index 2024 of the World Food Programme says that food waste in Bangladesh stands at 82 kilograms per person, up from 61 kilograms in 2021. Besides, Bangladesh鈥檚 food waste is higher than it is in the United States with 73 kilograms, the Netherlands with 59 kilograms and Japan with 60 kilograms.
Whilst the World Bank report puts the food losses and waste in Bangladesh down to inadequate food processing and the absence of food recycling, local experts say that the growing food losses can be minimised by promoting small-, medium- and large-scale agro-processing units and an enhanced capacity for food waste recycling, which appears to be a growing global trend to reduce food losses aimed at achieving the target of zero hunger, keeping to the Sustainable Development Goals. Bangladesh ranks 85th in the Global Hunger Index 2025, with a score of 19.2, which suggests that the country has a level of hunger that is moderate. A 2021 Bangladesh Agricultural University study says post-harvest losses of agricultural produce were substantial, in the ranges of 12鈥�32 per cent irrespective of food groups. It says that the average rice loss was 23鈥�28 per cent, which includes 17.80 per cent incurred post harvest. Bangladesh has about 400 cold storages, but the majority of them are meant to store potatoes and a few small cold storages are meant for produce such as fish, fruit and spices, which cannot check against the waste of locally produced food items. Experts say that the maintenance of the cold chain and investment in food processing by micro-entrepreneurs could check food losses and waste, on the one hand, and do away with the need for growing food imports, on the other.
But investment in food processing and cold chains remains negligible. The government should, therefore, invest and make arrangements for investment in food processing and cold chains. It should also help the private sector in this direction by ensuring easy access to bank loans.
