Global hunger remains a persistent challenge. Around the world, about 318 million people go to bed hungry according to the 2026 Global Outlook by the World Food Programme. Of that number, 41 million people are threatened with serious food insecurity. India is not immune to this threat; in the 2025 Global Hunger Index, it ranked 102 out of 123 countries, earning a score of 25.8 which signals a “serious” level of food insecurity. However, there is a painful contradiction that must not go unheeded. This crisis is not a result of insufficient food production. In fact, the world already grows enough to feed everyone on the planet: one of the lacunae is the scale of global food wastage. The United Nations Environment Programme’s Food Waste Index Report 2024 revealed that the world wasted 1.05 billion tonnes of food in 2022. Shockingly, more than one billion meals are wasted every day, contributing to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This wastage is caused by multiple factors that point to the hydra-headed nature of the challenge. An estimated 60% of it is the result of inadequate post-harvest storage capacities, 28% emanates from food services, and 12% is accounted for by retail. Households are another point of leakage: they make up 19% of the waste in the total food produced. Even though Indian households waste less food than the global average, the country faces peculiar challenges. For instance, in Punjab, a significant amount of the food grown does not reach the plates of the needy due to extreme weather events and substandard storage facilities.

Ending food waste requires specific interventions in a country like India. First, a national cold-chain system, especially in states like Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, must be implemented. Second, food must be donated to food banks — many European countries practise this — to be redistributed as surplus. Third, farmers must be equipped with material and technology to minimise post-harvest loss. There must be compulsory food waste tracking and reporting to make waste visible. Food businesses should be held accountable for transgressions. These institutional tweaks must be accompanied by a change in the prevailing value system that associates excess — and the resultant wastage — as a manifestation of wealth and power. Rekindling the idea of checking the wastage of food as a civic and humanitarian responsibility could be one way of battling this scourge.