Assessing food loss and waste

Abstract

Reducing food loss and waste (FLW) is a key challenge of current food systems, and halving the amount of per capita food waste at the retail and consumer levels is listed among the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs target 12.3), together with the reduction of food losses in the production and processing stages of global food chains. Reliable methods for FLW assessment are needed to support the reporting against the SDG target 12.3 and to design effective interventions against FLW. Early studies on FLW provided an overview of the scale of the problem and had a very important role in spreading awareness about this issue. The number of studies reporting the amount of FLW in different stages of the food chain increased steeply after 2010, by providing evidence of the amount of FLW generated in different settings. Drawing from this scientific evidence, the policy discourse has recently focused on the identification of a range of methods that can support reliable assessments of FLW, across different settings and stages of the food supply chain. This chapter provides an overview of such methods, by highlighting the rationale that pushed their definition and their scope for implementation.