The Hidden Battle Against Food Loss: Protecting Stored Grain, Preserving Futures

In reality, that’s what happens on a global scale: roughly one-third of all food produced worldwide — about 1.3 billion tons every year — is lost before it reaches retail or wasted at the consumer stage.¹ Food loss and waste together account for 8%–10% of global greenhouse gas emissions and use nearly 30% of the world’s agricultural land, even as hundreds of millions of people face hunger and undernutrition.²

At Envu, we understand that growing food is only half the challenge. Ensuring it reaches people is the other half. Guided by our purpose — advancing healthy environments for everyone, everywhere — and true to our belief in being a force with nature, one of the ways we help protect our food supply is by advancing customer-focused solutions that help reduce post-harvest losses, strengthen food security and expand our collective impact.

The Hidden Enemies of Harvest

Much of the problem happens after harvest, when crops are stored but not yet consumed. Weevils, beetles, borers and moths bore into kernels and spread heat and moisture; mites proliferate under humidity; fungi and mycotoxins follow. Rodents consume and contaminate stores. In some cases, as much as 50% of cereal grains can be lost during post-harvest storage, often due to insect damage and associated fungi.³ That means months of work in the field can be undone in weeks — undermining food supplies, farmer incomes and community resilience.

How Environmental Science Helps

Protecting food after harvest is just as critical as producing it in the first place. This is where environmental science makes an essential difference. By combining proven chemistry, biological approaches, digital monitoring tools and stewardship programs, Envu works alongside customers to prevent infestations before they escalate, reduce preventable waste and strengthen food security.

This approach reflects our broader sustainability commitment: to pursue nature-positive innovation that safeguards both food supplies and ecosystems. For example, climate change is already reshaping grain protection challenges in Europe — and our research partnerships are helping customers prepare with new solutions tailored to these evolving risks.

The Envu Portfolio of Solutions

At the heart of the Envu stored grain protection portfolio is K-Obiol®, trusted for decades across Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia and Australia. Its formulation delivers long-lasting protection against the most common stored grain pests, including weevils, beetles and moths. By adhering to the grain surface without being absorbed, K-Obiol prevents insects from damaging kernels while keeping residue levels far below food safety limits.

As Frans Theunissen, silo manager at Eensgezindt Farm in South Africa, explained, the stakes are high: “The thing is, if we send something out from the site to a mill and there’s one live insect, it can cost you a lot of money.” He added that the right protection makes all the difference: “What I like about K-Obiol is that the grain stays safe. After 48 hours, after you’ve applied it to your wheat, you can send the trucks out to the mills.”

A single treatment of K-Obiol can protect grain for up to 12 months — watch how it works here.

This foundation was strengthened in 2025 with Envu’s acquisition of the Actellic® product line from Syngenta for stored grain use, which expands options for customers in Latin America, Africa and EMEA. The acquisition brings several well-known stored grain protection solutions into the Envu portfolio — including liquid, dust and smoke formulations — that provide broad-spectrum, knockdown and long-lasting control against a wide range of pests.

Together, K-Obiol and Actellic give growers and grain traders a more integrated, globally proven toolkit to defend harvests against pests that otherwise could destroy months of work in a matter of weeks.

Regionally, additional solutions such as Tempo® SC Ultra, Suspend® SC, Sensat®, DeltaDust® and Racumin® rodenticide complement our global portfolio. These products address local pest pressures and regulatory environments — from pre-binning treatments in North America to rodent control in Asia-Pacific — ensuring growers and storage operators have effective, tailored options alongside our proven global standards.

Working Toward a More Secure Future

If one out of every three grocery-filled bags never made it home, we’d call it a crisis. Yet that’s the scale of global food loss and waste — and it’s too great to ignore.

At Envu, we’re committed to the future of stored grain protection. That means balancing innovation with safeguarding proven solutions like K-Obiol, which has protected harvests for decades. In 2024 alone, our solutions safeguarded more than 70 million tons of grain worldwide, and by 2026, we aim to increase that to 75 million tons.⁴

Achieving this goal will require working hand-in-hand with our customers, partners and other stakeholders to shape the grain pest control solutions of tomorrow — solutions that reduce waste and advance global sustainability. And that’s exactly what we intend to do. Because when it comes to food security, growing food is only half the challenge. Ensuring it reaches people is the other half.

Discover more stories of how Envu is protecting harvests and advancing healthy environments worldwide in the Envu Sustainability Report 2024.

Sources

1. World Bank – What a Waste: Global Food Loss and Waste.
2. UN Environment Programme – Food Waste Index Report 2024.
3. World Food Programme (WFP) – Global Report on Food Crises 2023
4. Envu Sustainability Report 2024