China releases new action plan on food waste
Beijing is laser-focused on cutting food waste.
On Monday, the Party Central Committee and State Council issued an action plan on conserving food and combatting food waste.
ICYDK: Globally, roughly a third of all food is lost or wasted between the farm and the dinner table.
- China is no exception – a 2021 Nature study estimated 27% of all food is lost or wasted annually in China, with almost half of that during post-harvest processing, logistics, and storage.
Reducing food waste has been a top policy priority for some years. In 2020, Xi Jinping kicked off the push to rein in China's "shocking and distressing" levels of food waste. Since then, policymakers have:
- Launched a “Clean Plate Campaign”
- Adopted an Anti-Food Waste Law
- Issued a 2021 action plan to combat food waste
The new action plan makes a crucial update to the 2021 version: It commits to establish a statistical survey system by 2027 that will collect data and carry out spot checks on food loss and waste along supply chains.
Get smart: You can't manage what you can't measure.
- Gathering better data on where food waste is taking place will enable policymakers to hone in on real problem areas in food storage, logistics, and processing – and tone down the guilt trip about consumers' restaurant ordering habits.
Get smarter: If China cuts its annual food waste by even a small fraction, that will reduce demand for imports while feeding tens of millions of people.