A critical lever for improving economic efficiency will be left off the agenda at Jim Chalmers’ Economic Reform Roundtable, writes OzHarvest CEO James Goth.

As Jim Chalmers convenes the Economic Reform Roundtable, the national conversation has once again turned to how we can boost productivity.

But while economists are set to debate tax settings, capital flows and workforce participation, a critical lever for improving economic efficiency will be left off the agenda: food rescue.

In standard economic terms, productivity measures how much output we can produce from a given set of inputs. But what if much of that output is simply wasted? And what if there’s a proven, low-cost mechanism for turning that waste into social and economic value? If we fail to account for waste in our productivity calculations, we’re missing a major opportunity to improve both efficiency and wellbeing.

In the food economy, this blind spot is staggering. Australia wastes around 7.6 million tonnes of food every year – that means one third of all food........

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