Introduction: Three guiding posts to inform policy actions
International attention on the issue of food loss and waste is firmly reflected in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Specifically, Target 12.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which embody this agenda, calls for the halving by 2030 of per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and the reduction of food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses. The increase in awareness started with a few publications that raised the profile of food loss and waste. Parfitt et al. (2010) was very influential as was an FAO report that estimated that one third of food produced was either lost or wasted (FAO, 2011). Concerning post-harvest losses, the World Bank (Zorya et al., 2011) highlighted the importance of PHL in cereals in Sub-Saharan Africa.
A decade later, many countries are taking action to reduce food loss and waste, but the challenges ahead remain significant and we need to step up efforts. Meeting SDG Target 12.3 could contribute to meeting other SDG targets, not least that of achieving Zero Hunger, in line with the integrated nature of the 2030 Agenda. This chapter provides a brief overview of challenges and options, highlighting that, although food loss and waste (FLW) reduction is at the forefront of the policy debate, the evidence that can inform policymakers on the topic is extraordinarily sparse and heterogeneous in terms of methods and definitions. Being aware that FLW is a problem is just the first step towards addressing it. A number of publications have started to provide insights that can help design interventions to reduce FLW. Some are conceptual (Bellemare et al., 2017; Koester, 2017; Ellison et al., 2019) while others provide more of an overview (Affognon et al., 2015; Sheahan and Barrett, 2017; Xue et al., 2017; Aragie et al., 2018; Reynolds et al., 2019) or on methodology and measurement (Garrone et al., 2014; Delgado et al., 2020; FAO, 2019), as well as protocols being developed (FLW protocol, 2016).
This chapter touches upon three dimensions that need to be considered. Firstly, we need to know – as accurately as possible – how much food is lost and wasted, as well as where and why. Secondly, we need to be clear about our underlying reasons or objectives for reducing food loss and waste – be they related to efficiency, food security or the environment. Thirdly, we need to understand how food loss and waste, as well as the measures to reduce it, affect the objectives being pursued. One of the main issues is that in the near future decisions will have to be made under very limited information. Clearly we need to continue working on monitoring and building an evidence base, but also provide guidance to policymakers based on the limited information we do have.
Concerning the first dimension, the surprising fact is how little we really know about how much food is lost or wasted, and where and why this happens. The broad estimate, prepared for FAO in 2011, suggested that around a third of the world’s food was lost or wasted every year. This estimate is still widely cited due to a lack of information in this field, but it can only be considered as very rough. It is therefore in the process of being replaced by two indices, thanks to efforts by FAO and UN Environment to estimate more carefully and more precisely how much food is lost in production or in the supply chain before it reaches the retail level (through the Food Loss Index) or is subsequently wasted by consumers or retailers (through the Food Waste Index). Current estimates made by FAO for the Food Loss Index (FLI) tell us that globally, for the year 2016, around 14 percent of the world’s food is lost from post-harvest before reaching the retail level. This global estimate is useful in conveying the magnitude of the problem. However, to intervene effectively we need to look beyond the global numbers and understand where in the food supply chain losses and waste are concentrated and the reasons why they occur. The FLI development is part of a broader process, in collaboration with many countries that supports such an effort.
Literature and the FLI show that losses and waste tend to be higher for some specific commodity groups, although they can occur at all stages of the food supply chain to different degrees. However, what is striking is the vast range in terms of percentages of food loss and waste for the same commodities and the same stages in the supply chain both within and across countries (FAO, 2019). This suggests that there is considerable potential to reduce food loss and waste where percentage losses are higher than in other places. However, it also shows that we cannot generalize about the occurrence of food loss and waste across food supply chains but must, on the contrary, identify critical loss points in specific supply chains as a crucial step in taking appropriate countermeasures.
Regarding the second dimension, although the SDGs include the reduction of food loss and waste as a target in its own right, we need to be clear about why we are pursuing it – or what is the underlying objective. Individual actors, from primary producers right up to consumers, may have a private interest in reducing food loss or waste to increase their profits or income, their personal well-being or that of their families. However, this private incentive is not always strong since reducing food loss and waste may require investing money or time which, in the perception of these actors, could outweigh the benefits (Ellison et al., 2019). There may also be barriers that prevent private actors from making these investments, e.g. credit constraints or a lack of information about options for reducing food loss and waste. On the other hand, there may be a stronger public interest in reducing food loss and waste because it contributes to other public objectives, be they environmental or linked to food security and nutrition (Kummu et al., 2017; Neff et al., 2015; Shafiee-Jood and Cai, 2016; FAO, 2019; Global Panel, 2018; Springmann, 2018).
The potential public benefits call for public interventions in the form of investments or policies that create incentives for private actors to reduce food loss and waste or remove the barriers that prevent them from doing so. To understand the magnitude of the food loss phenomenon the value of these losses is upwards of 400 billion USD, and in terms of GHG emissions, the food lost is associated with around 1.5 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent. From a nutritional point of view, this is equivalent to more than 1,000 trillion milligrams of phosphorus and more than 350 trillion milligrams of magnesium. [1] Clearly the magnitude of impacts in these different policy-relevant dimensions is a call to action. However, linkages between food loss and waste, on the one hand, and food security and environmental impacts, on the other, are complex and need to be thoroughly understood. Positive outcomes from reducing food loss and waste are far from guaranteed, and the impacts will differ according to where food loss and waste is reduced (FAO, 2019; Cattaneo et al., 2020).
The third dimension implies policymakers need to be clear about the objectives they choose to pursue. Focusing on one objective will indeed have implications for where food loss and waste reductions can be most effective. For instance, if the objective is to improve food security, reducing on-farm losses – particularly on small farms in low-income countries with high levels of food insecurity – is likely to have strong positive impacts. It may directly improve food security in the affected farm households and may also have positive effects in local areas, and even beyond, if more food becomes available. Reducing food loss and waste further along the food supply chain may improve food security for consumers, but farmers may actually be negatively affected if demand for their produce declines. On the other hand, while reducing consumer food waste in high-income countries with low levels of food insecurity may have some impact on vulnerable people locally through food collection and redistribution initiatives, the impact on the food insecure in distant low-income countries is likely to be very small (FAO, 2019; Rutten et al., 2015).
If the objectives for reducing food loss and waste are essentially environmental, interventions may be guided by the specific environmental objective being pursued. In the case of GHG emissions, since these accumulate throughout the supply chain, then cutting waste by consumers will have the biggest impact because food wasted at this stage represents a larger amount of embedded GHG emissions. In the case of land and water, the environmental footprint is tied mainly to the primary production phase. Therefore, reducing food loss and waste at any stage of the food supply chain can contribute to reducing overall land and water use at the global level. More guidance can be provided based on the environmental impact of value chains for specific commodities.
The need for better evidence to inform policymakers
Efforts to improve the evidence base are key. In 2019 the FAO prepared new food loss estimates to monitor progress in the context of the SDGs. The FLI monitors percentages of food removed from the supply chain over time, relative to a base period currently set at 2015, in order to track progress against SDG target 12.3. The Inter-Agency Expert Group on SDGs has approved the FLI and upgraded it to Tier II, meaning the indicator is conceptually clear and has an internationally established methodology, and that standards are available.
Although progress in monitoring food loss is being made, the limited data provided by countries remains an underlying constraint. Fabi et al. (2020) state that in the short run, the only available option is making the best use of existing information. Data owners and researchers may use common repositories of international organizations such as the World Bank, the APHLIS, the WRI and the FAO, where information can be shared, harmonized to the extent possible, aggregated, and employed in estimation models to generate policy-relevant evidence, which is what FAO is currently doing with the FLI.
As for selecting commodities, given that estimating losses for many commodities across all countries is operationally challenging, the FLI focuses on the top ten commodities by economic value within five commodity groups for each country: 1. cereals and pulses; 2. fruits and vegetables; 3. roots, tubers and oil-bearing crops; 4. animal products; and 5. fish and fish products. Given cost-effectiveness concerns for data collection, the FLI helps improve the evidence base of losses by selecting only a few critical products and focusing on improving the data quality for those.
An important aspect of measurement is the one of units and whether they are suited to measure a specific objective, be it social, economic or environmental (FLW protocol, 2016, Appendix D). The FLI is based on the economic value as reflected by farmgate prices of commodities, which may be highly relevant when devising interventions to reduce food loss as it accounts for the costs and benefits of loss reductions. However, food loss can be measured using a range of metrics depending on the objectives pursued. Caloric units may be more relevant in nutritional terms, in which case energy-dense foods will then have a greater weight in calculating food loss. However, if the policy focus is on environmental sustainability, for example with the objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it can make sense to look at purely physical quantities such as tonnes lost and multiply them by an environmental impact factor. Next we examine what guidance can be provided by looking at percentage losses individually at product categories, and then using economic and environmental metrics.
Preliminary guidance and challenges based on the percentage losses by product category
When examining losses at In terms of food groups, roots, tubers and oil-bearing crops report the highest level of loss, followed by fruits and vegetables (Figure 1). It is not surprising that fruits and vegetables incur high levels of loss given their highly perishable nature. Results for roots, tubers and oil-bearing crops are mainly driven by cassava and potato losses, given the significant amount of data reported for these commodities. In fact, cassava is the most perishable of roots and tubers and can deteriorate within two or three days after harvesting; potatoes, on the other hand, require careful handling and proper storage, especially in the warm and humid climates of many developing countries (FAO, 1998).
Measuring how much food is lost post-harvest is an important first step towards understanding what we are up against. However, understanding by how much it is viable to reduce such losses is still a challenge. As the evidence-base on postharvest loss reduction interventions is relatively sparse for most of the key staple food crops in SSA and South Asia, future studies should be conducted to increase the available data on key legumes, root and tuber crops, fruits and vegetables, which have among the higher loss levels. The limited evidence that does exist on postharvest loss reduction interventions may be extrapolated to other crops within each crop group (cereals, legumes, root and tuber, fruits and vegetables), however field level research studies should be conducted to confirm the validity of such an approach.
Within the limited evidence-base that does exist, the focus has been predominately on tangible technical interventions to reduce losses during storage in both durable (cereal, legume) and perishable (fruit, vegetable and root and tuber) crops, so future studies should take into account the full value chain and the key actors (farmers, traders, wholesalers), with a particular focus on identifying critical loss points (Edwardson, 2018). Furthermore, in terms of the broader picture about addressing drivers of food loss, there is very little evidence available on the effect of any training, finance, policy or infrastructure interventions on postharvest loss reduction. Since these have not yet been studied systematically, future studies should incorporate these factors.
What can be gleaned from taking environmental and food security perspectives?
Despite this call to action to better understand the impact of interventions, the reality in the near future is that policymakers will have to make decisions based on limited information. One way to address the challenges of limited evidence is to target interventions in those value chains that are most relevant for the objectives being pursued. For example, policymakers interested in reducing the environmental impact of food loss and waste should first consider which environmental dimension to target (carbon, land or water) and which food products contribute most to that dimension’s footprint when lost or wasted. Figure 2 provides estimates of the relative contribution of the main food groups to overall global food losses and waste in terms of quantities (first bar on the left), as well as to the associated carbon, land and blue-water footprints (second, third and fourth bars). The estimates include losses and waste from on-farm post-harvest up to the retail level, excluding consumption, and provide a general indication of which types of food products should be targeted if food loss and waste reduction is to contribute to environmental sustainability.
As illustrated by the first bar on the left of Figure 2, cereals and pulses account for the largest share of food losses and waste in quantity terms, followed by roots, tubers and oil-bearing crops, and then fruits and vegetables. The contribution of animal products to overall food losses and waste is limited, however their contribution to the land footprint of food loss and waste is not. Indeed, animal products account for over 60 percent of the total land footprint (last bar on the right). This percentage reflects the fact that livestock production requires substantial amounts of agricultural land to produce animal feed or for grazing (FAO, 2013a). Any interventions that aim to reduce the land footprint of food losses or waste should therefore focus on this product group.
If the aim of an intervention is to address water scarcity, then cereals and pulses should be targeted as a product group, followed by fruits and vegetables. Together, these two categories account for nearly 90 percent of the water footprint of total food loss and waste. This percentage reflects the fact that a significant share of irrigation water is used to produce these crops, especially wheat, rice and maize (Mekonnen & Hoekstra, 2011). The livestock sector contributes relatively little to the blue-water footprint associated with food loss and waste, possibly because the average blue-water footprint of animal products incorporates the footprint of livestock systems that do not use irrigated feed grains. Animal products from systems that use feed produced on irrigated fields may well have a larger water footprint than other food groups (FAO, 2013b).
Concerning GHG emissions, the largest share is linked to cereals and pulses because of the volume of losses and waste in these value chains. The relative contribution of animal products to total GHG emissions associated with food losses and waste is limited, due to the limited share of these products in total food losses and waste, but the carbon footprint per tonne of animal products is the largest of all food groups, with the exception of cereals and pulses (FAO, 2019).
Taking a different perspective, a reduction in on-farm losses may have strong positive food security impacts. This holds particularly for smallholders in low-income countries where the availability of food to subsistence farmers improves. Farmers who market part of their output have larger volumes to sell and thus their incomes and food security may increase, provided the price drop resulting from the output boost does not offset this effect. On the other hand, a reduction in losses or waste by suppliers beyond the primary production stage boosts supplies and lowers prices further along the supply chain. However, farmers may see the demand for their products decrease, with negative implications for their incomes and thus food security. A reduction in the amount of food wasted by consumers will likely improve food availability and access for consumers, but the resulting reduction in consumer demand may leave farmers and other actors in the supply chain worse off. This highlights that food security and nutrition outcomes will likely be affected by the point of intervention in the value chain to reduce food loss and waste.
The above provides a general indication about what value chains one could target for interventions depending on the environmental or food security objectives. However, it should be noted that there is a lack of evidence regarding actual social, economic and environmental outcomes of postharvest loss reduction interventions, as technical efficacy of interventions has been the primary focus to date. Future studies should include measurements of these non-technical factors in their designs.
Another dimension that is often mentioned, but understudied, is the link between postharvest losses in the quantity and the quality of food crops and household food and nutrition security and income. More evidence is needed in this area on the efficacy of postharvest loss reduction interventions, particularly when combined with non-technical aspects such as training and handling practice change interventions. It is also important to improve understanding of the combined effect of financial, policy and infrastructural interventions and more participatory learning approaches on nutrition and food security.
Policy recommendations
The 2019 State of Food and Agriculture Report, focusing on FLW, builds on the business case for private investments and efforts to reduce food loss and waste through private incentives. After doing so it expands the rationale beyond the business case to one for public interventions, to reduce some of the barriers that prevent producers and consumers from reducing food loss and waste, e.g. generating and/or sharing information on how to reduce food loss and waste. Beyond that, public interventions should focus on providing public goods or reducing negative externalities (FAO, 2019).
In this context, technological solutions for post-harvest management, donor- and private sector-supported promotion is already occurring at different scales. However, for improved postharvest management and loss reduction, we need recognition that:
i. Greater awareness-raising of the ability to, and benefits of, reducing losses is required;
ii. Options need to be tailored to specific contexts – the technologies have strengths and weaknesses and due to the existence of significant differences between households, agro-ecologies and crops, one-size-fits-all solutions are unlikely;
iii. Technical solutions need to be simultaneously introduced or promoted alongside good postharvest management training to build understanding of why losses are occurring, and how the technologies can best be used;
iv. Implementation of policies that support quality-sensitive markets are needed to drive improved postharvest management and loss reduction.
At the same time, it should be recognized that broader policies (beyond technology) to promote overall rural development may allow producers along the supply chain to make investments that will also reduce food losses. In this respect, supportive national policies, infrastructure and access to finance are important, but there is currently an evidence gap regarding in which ways and how effectively these interventions can help.
Based on both private and public interventions to reduce food loss and waste, it is possible to provide some guiding principles for interventions. Clarity about the objective(s) being pursued is essential for identifying the most appropriate policies and entry points for reducing food loss and waste. This is particularly the case if financial resources are limited, and information is scarce, whereby policymakers may decide to focus on specific segments of a value chain depending on the underlying objective being pursued.
If the focus is on economic efficiency, an attractive option is to enable the business case for food loss and waste reduction, wherever it may present itself along the supply chain or geographically. However policymakers will have to take into account that food loss and waste reductions will have winners and losers. The benefits (or costs) are not always enjoyed (or borne) by those implementing them (HLPE, 2014) For instance, as already noted, a reduction in food losses by processors may reduce the demand from processors for farmers’ output, thus depressing the income of the latter.
When thinking in terms of public benefits of FLW reductions, a focus on food security will tend to favour interventions early in the food supply chain, where positive food security impacts will be felt throughout the rest of the supply chain. To reach environmental objectives, food loss and waste reduction needs to take place downstream of the environmental impact. Finally, location matters when pursuing food security and nutrition or environmental objectives, the only exception being a fall in GHG emissions which has the same impact on climate change wherever it occurs.
Different countries will have different objectives to guide their choices. Low-income countries will likely want to focus on improving food security and nutrition, in addition to the sustainable management of land and water resources. This calls for a focus on reducing food loss and waste early in the supply chain, including at farm level, where impacts will be the strongest and losses tend to be the largest. High-income countries with low levels of food insecurity will likely place the emphasis on environmental objectives, in particular the reduction of GHG emissions. This will call for interventions later in the supply chain, in particular retail and consumption, where levels of loss or waste also tend to be the highest.
In situations where reducing food waste is identified as a priority, campaigns to raise awareness among consumers about how much food they waste, how it affects their household budget and what they can do about it, have been successful in a number of countries (FAO, 2019). Another avenue to reduce food waste is through support to food banks, which can help meet the needs of part of the food insecure population in a country while reducing food waste.
Finally, a critical issue is that of policy coherence and trade-offs between objectives, which requires that all options are weighed together for their impact to arrive at solutions that promote one objective without unintentionally harming another one. Some policies, for example those for improving food security and nutrition, may actually lead to increased levels of food loss and waste because they involve access to safe and nutritious diets with nutrient-rich foods that are often highly perishable. However, this should not be seen as a problem; the basic question is rather whether food loss and waste occurs because of an inefficient and distorted food system, and if it is possible to take measures that reduce food loss and waste without compromising food security and nutrition.
Policy coherence is important also because the amount of food loss and waste that can feasibly be reduced will depend on the costs and benefits relative to the status quo. Public policies affecting food prices can change incentives for consumers and producers to avoid loss and waste of food. If not well designed, agricultural policies or those with food security and nutrition objectives, e.g. food subsidies, may have unintended consequences by creating a disincentive to avoid food loss and waste. Therefore, reducing food loss and waste can also be furthered through the reform of policies that unintentionally lead to greater food loss and waste.
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END NOTES
[1] These estimates are based on data used to produce FAO’s newly developed Food Loss Index, extrapolating the impacts to include commodities that are not included specifically in the FLI commodity groups, but are represented by the groupings. These estimates are lower bounds because pre-harvest and harvest losses are not included in the FLI estimate.