Not too late, yet

Reducing food loss and waste is an opportunity to cut emissions, improve food and nutrition security and income in India, as per a systematic analysis by World Resources Institute (WRI). By Team Viva

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report (SAR6) has confirmed the climate crisis this generation and the ones in the future are going to face and is unequivocal about human influence in global warming. Globally, food loss and waste contribute to 8 per cent of emissions.

To understand the social, environment, and economic impact of food loss and waste in India and the current state of play, the World Resources Institute India (WRI India) undertook a systematic analysis of 106 published and grey literature, along with consultations with sectoral experts. This study, supported by the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU) India platform, highlights significant gaps in research, policy and practice which need to be addressed systematically to manage food loss and waste in India.

The new study from WRI India, Food Loss and Waste in India: The Knowns and the Unknowns, provides an important foundation to start developing a road map for addressing the nation’s food loss and waste, like understanding the magnitude, identifying the hotspots and critical loss points, and so on.

The study found that:

• There is much more research emphasis on the quantity of post-harvest losses than on food waste in India. Even in post-harvest losses, the quality aspects of food loss remain neglected.
• While there is national and sub-national research on post-harvest losses, the existing data across various studies are not comparable due to different measurement metrics used by them.
• The empirical research on the extent of food waste at the household, retail and service level is almost non-existent. The interventions around food waste are mainly focused on food bank interventions or managing waste through composting.
• The social, economic, and environmental aspects of food loss and waste in India are largely unexplored. Gender-disaggregated research on food loss and waste is neither available nor considered in improving technology or in solutions for its management.
• The policy interventions are largely focused on augmenting post-harvest storage infrastructure including the cold-chain infrastructure.

Talking about the findings, Monika Agarwal, senior manager at WRI India, said, “Significant amount of food in India never gets consumed because it gets wasted during its movement from farm to plate. The loss is much more than just the amount of food, it is about the health of our people, ecosystem - plants, animals, soil, water, biodiversity which are all interlinked. We need concerted multi-actor efforts to reduce food getting lost in how we produce, store, transport, process, distribute, and consume food.”

Dr O P Agarwal, CEO of WRI India pitched in, “WRI India’s motivation for working on this issue is that large reductions in food loss and waste is a crucial element in achieving healthy diets by 2050. Cutting down food waste is an opportunity to reduce pressure on land, water and air. It will also enhance the availability of food, and improve the incomes of farmers and consumers. Though there are gaps in research, there is significant information on post-harvest losses that need to be built upon systematically.”

Considering the observations, the study recommended developing a roadmap for managing food loss and waste in India, based on data-driven strategies and solutions and taking into account the challenges faced by diverse stakeholders.

Call to action

In accordance with the findings, WRI India and FOLU India coupled the launch of the working paper with a round table to discuss the ‘Champions 12.3 strategy of Target-Measure-Act’ which includes adopting the Sustainable Development Goal target 12.3 which underlines halving food waste and reducing losses while measure food loss and waste to take action on the hotspots identified. The findings have resulted in the emergence of the ‘Friends of Champions 12.3’ in India, a group of entities from diverse sectors across the globe that are committed to reducing food loss and waste.

Dr Jayahari K M, the country co-ordinator for FOLU, expressed, “Considering the complexities in Indian agriculture and management of commodity supply chains in private and public sectors, FOLU looks forward to creating a strong action coalition under the Friends of Champion 12.3 partnership, with wider participation and focus. We hope governments — both subnational and national — would join this action coalition.”