# Unmeasured supply loss

Growers and buyers can't see the food lost between them

Problem 0015 · Food · Theme: Measurement · What it would take: A side project · Scope: Global · Editorial grade: High · Framed 21 September 2026 · Framed from public reporting

Loss happens at the handovers: field to packer, packer to distributor, distributor to shelf. Every party measures only its own side of each one. So each set of numbers looks defensible while the total is enormous, and the interventions that would work are precisely the ones nobody can see, because they sit between two businesses rather than inside one.

## Who lives with it

Growers and packers · distributors and independent retailers · redistribution charities working the same corridors

## Why now

FAO estimates that 13.3% of the world's food was lost in 2023 after harvest and before retail, on farms and in transport, storage, wholesale and processing, up slightly from 13.0% in 2015 when global monitoring began.

## Why it matters

Measurement at the handover is the wedge, and it is cheap: the produce is already photographed, weighed and scanned on both sides of every transfer. Nobody is joining those records, because each side owns only its own.

## From public reporting

- [SDG indicator 12.3.1: Global food losses](https://www.fao.org/sustainable-development-goals-data-portal/data/indicators/1231-global-food-losses/en/), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

## Cite it

“Growers and buyers can't see the food lost between them.” Ainna Problem Radar, problem 0015, 21 September 2026. https://ainna.ai/problems/growers-and-buyers-cant-see-the-food-lost-between-them

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