The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) today by organizing the final workshop in Tehran within the framework of the “Capacity Building for Food Loss Reduction in the Near East” ended this sub-regional project in Iran. 

According to a press release published by the FAO Representation in the Islamic Republic of Iran, through implementation of this project that concentrated on Losses in the Meat Value chain in the country, strengthened the national capacity of local leaders of producer associations, food industry managers, and extension personnel in the Islamic Republic of Iran to reduce losses and improve meat value chain management for food producers, handlers, processors, distributors and marketers.

Over the period of 24 months, with the help of FAO’s Technical Cooperation Project (TCP), this project achieved great capacity building outcomes such as developing food loss prevention curricula and guidelines, a series of awareness building workshops on reducing inefficiencies in food value chains for leaders of the food production, distribution and processing sectors, agri-business managers, and extension agents implemented.

By implementing the FAO project on Food Loss a large scale educational training program (including assessments and workshops) were conducted.

In his opening remarks, Mr. Serge Nakouzi, the FAO Representative to Iran by highlighting the fact that food is lost or wasted throughout the supply chain, stressed on investments in reducing losses in the country.
“The food supply chains in Iran need to be strengthened by, inter alia, encouraging small farmers to organize, diversify and upscale their production and marketing” he said.

He encouraged all sectors to engage in this effort and said that both the public and private sectors have a role to play in achieving food loss reduction goals in Iran.

According to FAO, in the Oriental Near East sub region alone, about 50 million metric tons (MT) of foods produced are lost every year (not accounting for losses in imported foods) between harvest and consumption.
Generally in this region food is lost mostly during the early and middle stages of the food supply chain much less food is wasted at the consumer level.

Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Lebanon as the focused countries in the FAO project are all net importers of food and will increasingly rely on imports due to population growth and a fragile natural resource base.