Dear Minister Counsellor Fratini,
Many thanks for this opportunity to engage in this process and provide input.
With Reference to the HLPE Report on Food Waste: A work stream specifically focusing on Post-Harvest Losses (PHLs) with cross cutting issues of environmental impact, nutrition, health & water sanitation, in its nature would likely engage a multi-stakeholder and multidisciplinary approach:
The food crisis in 2006/ 2007 resulted in a sharp rise in global food prices bringing an increased focus on agriculture and a renewed interest in the reduction of postharvest losses (PHLs) as a means of increasing food availability and rural incomes.
In the case of smallholders, most cereals are stored by farming households after harvest until they are sold or consumed during the year.
A key aspect of addressing post-harvest losses is through encouraging smallholders to invest more of their resources in postharvest handling and storage to maintain the high quality of their cereal and reap the rewards of higher value markets.
Better post-harvest management associated with loss reduction was, in addition to discussion the HLPE report, also reported by the World Bank’s 2011 “Missing Food Report” as a way of helping to build resilience against current and future climate-related shocks, and reduce the need for compensatory agricultural extensification, land use change, and damage to the environment services, including carbon sequestration.
The targets primary outcome if to achieve a goal on the reduction of food losses & waste – there should be a relevant end point e.g. 2030 & clear regional quantitative targets; with the note that post-harvest not only includes crop losses, but also livestock, fisheries. There should also be a further push for separation of both, loss and waste, with clear targets on Productivity losses (including Livestock) & Post-Harvest losses.
To address the remaining cross cutting issues – it is important to note that simply increasing the nutrition by ensuring a healthy and nutritious diet through promotion of a micronutrient rich diet, increasing coverage of nutrition behavior change activities is not enough. It must be couple with improved water sanitation and drinking water. It is key that improving nutrition and proving safe drinking water are principles that are run in parallel; since for example if a child is infected with a waterborne disease it is likely to fail to achieve the expected impact, to singularly increase the nutritive value of the child diet, as diarrhea usually accompanies these waterborne conditions.
For the Committee of Food Security; under this work stream there could be three key focus areas:
1. A CFS roundtable event on defining actionable linkages with water & health to synergise impacts, when improving nutrition through Food Security measures
2. Best Practices for reducing post-harvest and post production losses; Guidelines for countries on the correct measures to take and tools to use for greatest impact
3. A CFS roundtable event on solutions to reducing post-harvest losses and other food losses
Many thanks for your kind attention and advice.
Kind Regards
Georgina
Georgina Bingham Zivanovic PhD FRES
Product Development Manager Food Security
Vestergaard Frandsen SA
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Prof. Georgina Bingham Zivanovic