FAO's Food Loss and Waste (FLW) database is the largest online collection of data on both food loss and food waste and causes reported in scientific journals, academic publications, grey literature, countries among others. To continuously update the FLW database, the Data Lab scrapes the web to automatically identify openly accessible reports and studies measuring food loss and waste, and uses natural language processing (NLP) procedures to identify food products, stages of the value chain, and geographical areas, and quantities.
The database includes data obtained from hundred of publications and reports from various sources (subnational reports, academic studies, and reports from national and international organizations such as the World Bank, GIZ, FAO, IFPRI, and other sources).
The FLW database is open access: it can be freely queried, downloaded, and plotted in an interactive and structured way.
SDG target 12.3: By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses.