Today on World Food Day, we’re releasing a groundbreaking report which exposes the biggest source of food waste and isn’t from households or supermarkets – it's factory farming.

Our report, Food not Feed: How to stop the world’s biggest form of food waste, reveals that if we stopped feeding grain to factory farmed animals, we could feed an extra two billion people every year. That’s almost a quarter of the world’s population. In addition, land almost the size of Mexico would be freed up to grow food for people. The huge inefficiencies of using grain for factory farmed animals are explored in the report, which highlights that for very 100 calories of human-edible grain fed to animals, just 3-25 calories of meat or dairy are produced.

If we switched to regenerative farming, with animals fed on products people cannot eat, such as on pastures, by-products and properly treated unavoidable food waste and scraps, global food security would be hugely improved.

The report findings: a colossal waste

The report finds that globally, a colossal 766 million tonnes of grain are wasted every year from being fed to farmed animals, most of which are in factory farms. This is much more than is thrown away by households (631m tonnes), food service (290m tonnes) or retail (131m tonnes).

Additionally, almost 15 million hectares of arable land could be released to grow food for people in the EU if the use of grain to feed factory farmed animals was ended.

While 59 million tonnes of food are thrown away in the EU every year, the study highlights that almost 125 million tonnes of grain are wasted by being fed to animals – enough to feed an extra 247 million people per year.

And it’s getting worse. If nothing changes, by 2040 factory farms could need double the grain we currently use.

We’ve released a powerful interactive map which shows the scale of the problem in key countries.

Environmental damage

The report highlights how this wasteful system is also devastating our planet. Vast areas of land (thousands of hectares) are cleared to grow crops to feed animals which drives deforestation, kills nature and harms local communities.

The huge demand for grain as animal feed has also led to the expansion of monocultures. And the use of chemical pesticides and synthetic nitrogen fertilisers is degrading soil and polluting our air and water.

Peter Stevenson, our Chief Policy Advisor, said:

It is simply scandalous that while hundreds of millions of people go hungry and we face a triple planetary crisis, we are allowing hundreds of millions of tonnes of food to be wasted every year by being fed to factory farmed animals.

As well as being the world’s biggest form of animal cruelty, fuelling climate change and killing nature, factory farming wastes food on a colossal scale, undermining global food security.  

Governments must stop propping up wasteful grain-based factory farming with public money through subsidies and adopt fair policies that prioritise food over feed.

Next CAP key for sustainable food system

As EU policymakers are shaping the next Common Agriculture Policy (CAP), we’re urging them to prioritise the production of food for people instead of feed for animals. This is key if we want to use our natural resources efficiently, ensure the resilience of our food systems, and build a food system that feeds people, protects animals, and our planet.

Factory farming: the world’s biggest source of food waste