United Nation’s International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste
September 29th, 2022
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Food Loss and Waste Reduction – Why it matters for Food and Nutrition Security in Sustainable Food Systems
By Dirk E. Maier, Jane Lukhachi Ambuko, Jesus Orozco and Joseph O. Akowuah
Background
The 11th Global Food Security Index[1] shows a deterioration in the global food environment for the third year due to its vulnerability to shocks. Affordability of nutritious food and its safety and quality decreased, while inequity among countries increased. Loss and waste of nutritious food includes deterioration in quality (and safety) as well as loss in quantity. Food Loos and Waste (FLW) is a global problem that negatively impacts the bottom line of businesses and farmers, wastes limited resources, and damages the environment. More than 40% of fruits and vegetables in lower income countries generally spoil before they can be consumed. These goods include mangoes, avocadoes, pineapples, tomatoes, and bananas, many of which are in high demand and imported by medium and higher income countries especially European nations which are most food secure. FLW causes farmers to use precious resources (seed, soil, water, fertilizer) to produce nutritious food that either never makes it to market, spoils along the supply chain, or is otherwise thrown out by wholesalers, retailers and consumers due to short shelf-life or quality loss issues, creating a significant drain on environmental resources.
The negative impact of FLW on sustainability of our food systems calls for action from all stakeholders involved in production and consumption of food. To this end global, regional and national targets for FLW reduction have been set. At the global level, the sustainable development goal (SDG) 12 advocates for sustainable production and consumption. SDG 12.3 targets to cut per capita global food waste in half at the retail and consumer levels and to reduce food (and post-harvest) losses along production and supply chains by 2030. To realize these targets, a call to action has been sounded to all stakeholders in the food supply chain including practitioners (farmers, traders, transporters, processors), government and policy makers, research and academia, development partners, private sector and consumers.
[1] https://impact.economist.com/sustainability/project/food-security-index
Panelists:
Dr. Dirk Maier, Consortium Director, Iowa State University
Dr. Jane Ambuko, University of Nairobi
Dr. Joseph Akowuah, Kwame Nkruhma University of Science and Technology
Dr. Jesus Orozco, Zamorano University
More than 40% of fruits and vegetables are lost, spoiled or wasted along the supply chain from producer to consumer.
Consortium for Innovation in Postharvest Loss and Food Waste Reduction
The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), The Rockefeller Foundation, Iowa State University (USA), University of Maryland (USA), Wageningen University and Research (The Netherlands), Volcani Center (Israel), Zamorano University (Honduras), Stellenbosch University (South Africa), University of São Paulo (Brazil), University of Nairobi (Kenya), and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana) have partnered to collaborate as the Global Consortium for Innovation in Post-Harvest Loss and Food Waste Reduction. Through this Consortium, thought leaders and experts from across the globe work in tandem with industry and nonprofit organizations to address social, economic and environmental impacts caused by FLW. The Consortium’s agenda is focused on preserving nutrients, improving livelihoods, and realizing an efficient food system.
A key approach focuses on building the academic and entrepreneurial capacity of the next generation by engaging researchers and students in multi-national, multi-disciplinary teams in the project identification, planning, and execution phases together with experts and entrepreneurs from the private and public sectors.Our approach complements a key recommendation of the 11th Global Food Security Index report which is “innovation is essential to building resilience” and includes access to agricultural technology, education and resources. Researchers from the Consortium’s member institutions are engaged in various research and development activities aimed at creating awareness about FLW and applicable solutions; basic and applied research to find innovative solutions to the problem; capacity building of students and practitioners in the food sector; and outreach initiatives among others. Examples of research and outreach initiatives by the featured Consortium members include the following.
A key focus of the Consortium for Innovation in Post-Harvest Loss and Food Waste Reduction is building the academic and entrepreneurial capacity of the next generation by engaging researchers and students like these from Iowa State University and Kwame Nkrumah University in multi-national, multi-disciplinary teams.
Iowa State University (ISU, USA)
The ISU team is a multidisciplinary team led by Prof. Dirk E. Maier. A key focus has been on analyzing post-harvest loss data generated by the Rockefeller Yieldwise Initiative at multiple stages of the mango, maize, and tomato value chains in Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria. Results have been utilized to evaluate the impact of technologies promoted and creating a multi-criteria decision analysis system for identifying sustainable agricultural technologies in these value chains. Another focus has been on determining the properties to characterize performance of hermetic storage bag technology and recommend specifications for an international engineering standard. A dashboard is under development that allows prediction of hermetic liner performance as a function of gas barrier properties and biological seed/germ, fungi, and insect respiration. In partnership with Engineers Without Borders at ISU and KNUST, and Self-Help International, the team is also investigating the potential of shea and other value-adding crops in addressing rural poverty and food insecurity in remote rural areas of Ghana.
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST, Ghana)
The KNUST team is a multidisciplinary team led by Prof. Joseph Akowuah. As part of the Consortium the team focuses its research on developing innovative solutions to address FLW in three key crops (maize, cassava, tomato) that in Ghana are predominantly produced by smallholder farmers. In line with the Consortium agenda of “building the academic and entrepreneurial capacity of the next generation” more than 15 postgraduate students received support to conduct research activities on various technologies, practices, and interventions that seek to address FLW along the value chains of the three crops. In partnership with the private sector, over 1000 smallholder farmers have received training on small capacity drying systems, hermetic storage technologies, and mechanised harvesting interventions for maize and cassava to reduce postharvest loss and food waste at the smallholder level in Ghana.
The demonstration Hub for Innovative Cold Storage Technologies at the University of Nairobi.
University of Nairobi (Kenya)
The University of Nairobi Postharvest Research Team is a multidisciplinary team led by Prof. Jane Ambuko. The team is involved in basic and applied research focusing on innovative solutions for FLW reduction in fruits and vegetables. After years of adaptive research in cold storage technologies and small-scale processing technologies the team is now engaged in scaling up through the ‘hub and spoke’ approach. The team works with smallholder farmers who are organized in groups to introduce simple cooling technologies. The technologies have helped farmers to aggregate their produce and negotiate better prices from traders. The target groups have also been introduced to simple wet and dry processing technologies for fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices. Local processing facilities help farmers transform unsold perishable produce into shelf-stable products thereby minimizing postharvest losses while earning better returns. The University of Nairobi serves as a hub for research and capacity building and support the spokes. The spokes include practitioners in the food sector – farmers/farmer groups, traders, processors, extension agents and others.
Zamorano University (Honduras)
The Zamorano University team is led by Prof. Jesus Orozco. The team focuses on utilizing Black Soldier Fly (BSF, Hermetia illucens) to convert food and animal waste into high protein human food. Honduras is one of the five Latin-American countries with the highest malnutrition rate in Latin America. In some rural towns, more than half of the children from 6-60 months are below the height for their age and about a third are underweight. Access to affordable protein is frequently the biggest reason. Insect protein incorporated in the diet of farm animals (especially poultry) can help to alleviate this problem. BSF is a native insect that the team rears on food and animal waste. The high protein larvae is used to feed poultry, saving money on animal feed proteins such as imported soybean meal. Eggs and meat allow smallholder farmers to produce more animal-source protein for the human diet. BSF larvae are a powerful decomposer of food and animal waste helping with the reduction of contaminants and vectors of several diseases. Additionally, the decomposition process by larvae results in high nitrogen fertilizer that smallholder farers can use in crop production.
Laying hens being fed with Black Soldier Fly larvae that developed by converting food waste into valuable compost.
Conclusion
As stated by Maier et al. (2020)[1], the research agenda for reducing FLW requires “strong and sustained political will”, “suitable policy incentives”, and “the power of science and technology”. The research agenda of the Consortium for Innovation in Post-Harvest Loss and Food Waste Reduction is focused on closing the gap and achieve lasting, systemic change by utilizing the scale-up approach outlined by Cooley and Howard (2019): “(1) design interventions with scale in mind and clear scaling strategies; (2) assess and address obstacles to scalability; and (3) actively manage the pathway to scale.” The Consortium leveraged these principles to guide our research and development activities to scalable solutions across various crop value chains that have reduced FLW substantially and are making the global food system more sustainable.
[1] https://www.pas.va/en/publications/scripta-varia/sv147pas.html
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