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Data

Share of food lost in post-harvest processes

About this data

Source
FAO (2019) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
February 5, 2020
Date range
2015–2015
Unit
% of food produces

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

FAO – The State of Food and Agriculture 2019: Moving forward on food loss and waste reduction

Data represents the share of food lost (from post-harvest through to, but not including, retail level) by food group and by region. From the source: "Percentage of food loss refers to the physical quantity lost for different commodities divided by the amount produced. An economic weight is used to aggregate percentages at regional or commodity group levels, so that higher-value commodities carry more weight in loss estimation than lower-value ones".

This data is sourced from the UN FAO's 2019 State of Food and Agriculture report.

FAO. 2019. The State of Food and Agriculture 2019. Moving forward on food loss and waste reduction. Rome. Available at: http://www.fao.org/3/ca6030en/ca6030en.pdf

The data was made available in the UN FAO's interactive report accompanying the chart: http://www.fao.org/state-of-food-agriculture/en/.

Retrieved on
February 5, 2020
Retrieved from
http://www.fao.org/state-of-food-agriculture/en/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
FAO. 2019. The State of Food and Agriculture 2019. Moving forward on food loss and waste reduction. Rome.

Data represents the share of food lost (from post-harvest through to, but not including, retail level) by food group and by region. From the source: "Percentage of food loss refers to the physical quantity lost for different commodities divided by the amount produced. An economic weight is used to aggregate percentages at regional or commodity group levels, so that higher-value commodities carry more weight in loss estimation than lower-value ones".

This data is sourced from the UN FAO's 2019 State of Food and Agriculture report.

FAO. 2019. The State of Food and Agriculture 2019. Moving forward on food loss and waste reduction. Rome. Available at: http://www.fao.org/3/ca6030en/ca6030en.pdf

The data was made available in the UN FAO's interactive report accompanying the chart: http://www.fao.org/state-of-food-agriculture/en/.

Retrieved on
February 5, 2020
Retrieved from
http://www.fao.org/state-of-food-agriculture/en/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
FAO. 2019. The State of Food and Agriculture 2019. Moving forward on food loss and waste reduction. Rome.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Share of food lost in post-harvest processes”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from FAO. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/share-food-lost-type.html [online resource] (archived on May 11, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

FAO (2019) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

FAO (2019) – processed by Our World in Data. “Share of food lost in post-harvest processes” [dataset]. FAO, “The State of Food and Agriculture 2019: Moving forward on food loss and waste reduction” [original data]. Retrieved May 11, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/share-food-lost-type.html (archived on May 11, 2026).

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