Postharvest losses and waste in developed and less developed countries: opportunities to improve resource use

This review compares and contrasts postharvest food losses (PHLs) and waste in developed countries (especially the USA and the UK) with those in less developed countries (LDCs), especially the case of cereals in sub-Saharan Africa. Reducing food losses offers an important way of increasing food availability without requiring additional production resources, and in LDCs it can contribute to rural development and poverty reduction by improving agribusiness livelihoods. The critical factors governing PHLs and food waste are mostly after the farm gate in developed countries but before the farm gate in LDCs. In the foreseeable future (e.g. up to 2030), the main drivers for reducing PHLs differ: in the developed world, they include consumer education campaigns, carefully targeted taxation and private and public sector partnerships sharing the responsibility for loss reduction. The LDCs’ drivers include more widespread education of farmers in the causes of PHLs; better infrastructure to connect smallholders to markets; more effective value chains that provide sufficient financial incentives at the producer level; opportunities to adopt collective marketing and better technologies supported by access to microcredit; and the public and private sectors sharing the investment costs and risks in market-orientated interventions

The food waste hierarchy as a framework for the management of food surplus and food waste

The unprecedented scale of food waste in global food supply chains is attracting increasing attention due to its environmental, social and economic impacts. Drawing on interviews with food waste specialists, this study construes the boundaries between food surplus and food waste, avoidable and unavoidable food waste, and between waste prevention and waste management. This study suggests that the first step towards a more sustainable resolution of the food waste issue is to adopt a sustainable production and consumption approach and tackle food surplus and waste throughout the global food supply chain. The authors examine the factors that give rise to food waste throughout the food supply chain, and propose a framework to identify and prioritize the most appropriate options for prevention and management of food waste. The proposed framework interprets and applies the waste hierarchy in the context of food waste. It considers the three dimensions of sustainability (environmental, economic, and social), offering a more holistic approach in addressing food waste. Additionally, it considers the materiality and temporality of food. The food waste hierarchy posits that prevention, through minimization of food surplus and avoidable food waste, is the most attractive option. The second most attractive option involves the distribution of food surplus to groups affected by food poverty, followed by the option of converting food waste to animal feed. Although the proposed food waste hierarchy requires a fundamental re-think of the current practices and systems in place, it has the potential to deliver substantial environmental, social and economic benefits

Postharvest agriculture in changing climates: Its importance to African smallholder farmers

Climate change and variability affect not only the field stages and yields of crops, but also what happens to them after harvest. There has been little discussion of the impacts of climate change on postharvest agriculture, and still less on these impacts in developing countries. Many studies have focused on potential crop yield and pre-harvest implications of different climatic projections, but have omitted an analysis of the need and ability to then protect this increasingly valuable harvest as a vital aspect of food security. Postharvest systems will be affected by changes in temperature, rainfall, humidity, extreme events and the natural and human responses to climate change and variability. This study describes typical grain postharvest systems in east and southern Africa and discusses the likely impacts of different climate change trends on postharvest activities, assets and human well-being outcomes. Adaptation opportunities for creating more climate resilient postharvest agricultural systems and associated livelihoods are identified. Many of these adaptation opportunities are already known and understood by postharvest service providers, highlighting the significant challenge of getting postharvest knowledge into use at a larger scale. A discussion is presented on the factors influencing attempts to strengthen the adaptive capacity of postharvest systems, such as its invisibility, its omission from training curricula, innovation system challenges, the policy bias towards pre-harvest agricultural spending, limited understanding of gender and diversity aspects of postharvest roles, and the dominance of maize in the food system. The study recognises the crucial role of postharvest agriculture in helping communities adapt and cope with change