Dr Zafar Khan Safdar
In Pakistan, a country of fertile plains and ancient farming traditions, a quiet moral crisis unfolds every day. Food is discarded in staggering quantities while millions struggle to find their next meal. Recent report of United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Food Waste Index 2025 reveals that average Pakistani wastes about 122 kilograms of food each year, placing the country among the highest per-capita food wasters in the world. This reality sits uneasily beside another: tens of millions of Pakistanis live with food insecurity, and many families end their days without adequate nourishment. The coexistence of hunger and waste is not just an economic inefficiency but a deep social failure.
Roughly 30 percent of Pakistan’s population, over 60 million people, live below the poverty line. For these households, food is not taken for granted but anxiously calculated, meal by meal. Children in low-income communities frequently go to bed hungry, and malnutrition continues to haunt rural and urban areas alike. Pakistan’s ranking in the Global Hunger Index falls in the ‘serious’ category, a sobering indicator for a nation that produces vast quantities of wheat, rice, sugar, fruits and vegetables. The problem is not food production alone, but the massive loss and waste that occur after it leaves the farm and before it reaches the plate.
A significant portion of food in Pakistan is lost before consumption because of structural weaknesses in the supply chain. Farmers in remote districts often lack access to cold storage, forcing them to sell perishable goods at distress prices or watch them rot. Inadequate transportation infrastructure means produce spoils in transit. Wholesale markets lack modern preservation systems. At the retail and household levels, cultural habits and lack of awareness compound the problem: leftovers are discarded, excess food is prepared for social gatherings, and cosmetic standards lead vendors to reject edible produce that looks imperfect. Each discarded kilogram represents water drawn from scarce aquifers, fuel burned for transport, land tilled, and labour expended, all wasted without feeding a single person.
This crisis is unfolding at a time when global food systems are under extraordinary strain. Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, particularly the recent confrontations involving Iran, Israel and the United States, have unsettled energy markets and trade routes. Rising fuel prices ripple through agricultural systems everywhere. Fuel powers tractors, irrigation pumps, food processing plants and delivery trucks. When energy costs spike, food becomes more expensive to grow, transport and purchase. For a country like Pakistan, which imports fertilizers, edible oils and significant quantities of fuel, the knock-on effects are severe. Higher food prices erode purchasing power for the poor, pushing vulnerable families closer to hunger.
These international shocks reveal a deeper vulnerability in Pakistan’s domestic systems. The country’s food supply chain is fragile even in times of global stability; under external pressure, it becomes even more brittle. When storage and logistics are inefficient, and when waste is tolerated as normal, any rise in costs translates directly into scarcity for the poorest. The global crises may be beyond Pakistan’s control, but the scale of food waste within its borders is not.
Part of the problem lies in governance and priorities. Food systems reform rarely commands political urgency compared to fiscal deficits, debt negotiations or security concerns. Yet, addressing food waste could simultaneously improve nutrition, reduce economic losses and ease pressure on imports. Investment in cold storage facilities, modern wholesale markets and rural-urban transport networks could dramatically cut post-harvest losses. Incentives for private sector participation in logistics and preservation could transform how food moves from farm to consumer.
Equally important is building systems for redistribution, as across cities, hotels, restaurants, wedding halls, and markets discard large quantities of perfectly edible food daily due to oversized buffets, extravagant platters, and waste-encouraging promotional offers. Organized food banks, supported by municipal authorities and protected by legal frameworks for donors, could redirect this surplus to shelters and low-income communities. Civil society organizations already attempt such work on a small scale, but without institutional support their reach remains limited. Formalizing and scaling such efforts could turn waste into relief.
A cultural shift at the household level is essential, where food conservation is rarely discussed and excessive hospitality often leads to unnecessary waste. Public awareness can help reframe moderation as responsibility rather than miserliness. In a society where food holds deep religious and cultural value, the sight of edible meals in garbage bins while children go hungry is a contradiction that should trouble the national conscience. Addressing food waste is therefore not only about efficiency but about dignity, especially at a time when climate change, floods, droughts, and global conflicts are straining food systems and making it imperative for Pakistan to value every grain if it hopes to remain resilient.
Hunger amid abundance is not destiny; it is the direct result of failed policies, careless markets, and our own everyday indifference. If Pakistan cannot invest in storage, enable redistribution, and change public behaviour, then the gap between food produced and food consumed will remain a man-made tragedy. In a country where millions sleep fearing an empty plate, every grain, every fruit, every cooked meal is sacred. Throwing food away in such a society is not just wasteful, it is morally indefensible. Pakistan’s real failure is not that it cannot grow enough food, but that it refuses to value and protect what it already has.
The writer is Ph.D in Political Science and visiting faculty at QAU Islamabad. His area of specialization is political development and social change. He can be reached at zafarkhansafdar@yahoo.com and tweet@zafarkhansafdar.
