Food & Catering Factsheet - Global Public Procurement

Continuous access to sufficient, nutritious and fresh food is essential to guarantee a balanced diet to the global population. Over the past decades, the world has experienced a steady growth in food supply per capita. Data from the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) for example shows that the daily supply of calories per person worldwide increased by over 31% between 1963 and 2013 (from 2,096 kcal to 2,884). This increase in production has to a certain extent helped drive down global hunger, as the FAO estimates that the percentage of the global population experiencing undernourishment reduced from 13.1% to 10.9% between 2007 and 2017 (FAO 2018).

With the global population set to reach over 9 billion by 2050 that will further increase demand for food by 59–98% from 2005 levels (UN 2019), food-related challenges are however far from being addressed. Even though production has been increasing regularly over the past years, food security and nutritional health remain significant concerns in a context where population growth, changing diets and climate emergency impact the reliability, quality and distribution of supply. In parallel, the intensification of agricultural methods and the globalisation of supply chains is driving strong environmental and ethical concerns in the food and catering sector, warranting strong action to increase its sustainability.