The amount of food wasted annually would be enough to feed about 1.26 billion people, argued the Director-General of FAO at the opening of the XXVIII session of the Commission on Agriculture held in Rome, Italy.

Food shortages require transformative changes in the way food is produced, distributed and consumed, Qu Dongyu stressed, calling for a focus of action "to ensure the most efficient use of products and inputs, producing more with fewer resources."

Food shortages occur due to several factors, including the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change, and the war in Ukraine, hence its call for bold, increased, and collaborative action for daily access to enough nutritious food around the world, it said Monday.

The FAO official said that the world has "lost ground and is moving backwards" in its efforts to eliminate hunger and malnutrition and ensure food security for all, and called for an end to food waste.

Even with increasing food insecurity, the head of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) said that the agency's commitment to achieving the Zero Hunger goal by 2030 continues.

The FAO estimates that 828 million people were affected by hunger last year, up 46 million from 2020 and far from 150 million in 2019, the period before the pandemic.

For the head of the UN agency, the fragility of agrifood systems must be addressed alongside the urgent need to transform them to put them back on a sustainable path.