From WATTAgNet:On World Food Day 2014, the European Union is focusing on several research projects to feed the world without damaging the environment.The EU has invested more than EUR4 billion in research and innovation for a European bioeconomy that makes the most of renewable biological resources. One of those research projects is turning agricultural waste into animal feed. The project would provide new opportunities for farmers while cutting Europe’s dependence on feed imports and creating new jobs.“One third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally – a total 1.3 billion tonnes a year – and food processing produces a large amount of this waste,” said NOSHAN scientific coordinator Montse Jorba of the LEITAT Technological Center in Spain. “Fruit and vegetables have the highest wastage rates of any food. This amounts to a major squandering of resources, including water, land, energy, labor and capital.”A team of research centers, a university and companies from six EU countries and Turkey began in 2012 by assessing the value of waste and building a database of potential feed ingredients. The group hopes that by the end of the project in 2016 it will have identified the best technologies for extracting and upgrading each waste type.