SAVE FOOD: Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction

The first in the series of FAO Impact Webinars on Food Loss and Waste Reduction, this session highlighted concepts and problems of harvest and post-harvest food loss and waste and presented solutions and cases of effective intervention to reduce these losses.

 

 

Processing and packaging can play a role in preserving foods, but losses can be caused by inadequate facilities or processing capacity, technical malfunctions or human error, lack of proper process management, excessive trimming to attain a certain aesthetic, and in addition to all these: insufficient economic incentive to prevent these losses.

 

Solutions to food waste at this stage were explored during FAO’s second Impact Webinar.

FOOD IS LIFE We need to reduce food loss and food waste in Timor-Leste.

The videos were produced for Timorese audience to create awareness on food losses and food waste.

Food Loss & Food Waste

Robert VanOtterdijk, Agro-Food Industries Officer and Camelia Bucatariu, Technical Officer of the FAO Nutrition and Food Systems Division explain the importance of actively preventing and reducing food loss and waste and its direct contribution to food and nutrition security for all. They describe the FAO policy work, including key policy messages. This video forms part of a series of policy and governance videos being produced by FAO in 2016.

A FAO successful project in Burundi: ''Support to post-harvest fisheries technology''

Fisheries play an important role in the economic and social life in Burundi. Yet, about 10 to 15% of the harvest was lost during the processing phase. Fish drying, which is the most common processing technique in the country, was done generally on bare ground. This has led to partial or total alteration of the products, and has considerably reduced both income and livelihoods all along the value chain. In response to these issues, FAO (the Food and Agriculture organization of the United Nations) and the Burundi Fisheries Directorate started a project of 282,000 US dollars to improve fish processing method and reduce losses. In 2004, Mvugo, a fishing village located in the South on the shore of lake Tanganyika, was chosen as the pilot site of the project where a demonstration platform for improved technologies has been constructed. For less than a year during the implementation of the project, practical sessions for fish operators have been held on this site which was provided with various fish preservation and processing equipments. Specifically, the use of raised racks for fish drying was highly promoted. Women had a particular advantage during those training sessions. As a result, the beneficiary fishing communities have adopted the improved fish processing technique which has led to increased yield productivity of the sector and higher incomes for the fish processors as a result of greater consumers' confidence in dried fish products.

Aflatoxin. Learn the proper ways of storing your maize to avoid aflatoxin

Reducing Post Harvest Losses at Family Farm Level

Food Wastage Footprint 2

SAVE FOOD Congress 2014

Q&A on Food Waste and Losses

FAO Agro-Industry Officer Robert van Otterdijk talks about the difference between food waste and losses, quantifies the impact in different parts of the world, and explains how FAO is tackling the problem with the Save Food: Global Initiative on Food Losses and Waste.

Food loss reduction in The Gambia

A Food and Agriculture Organization project is working to reduce food losses in the Republic of the Gambia, where two years of crop failures and soaring food prices have left more than half the country's population without enough food. In a world where in 1 in 7 people go hungry, roughly one third of global food production gets lost or wasted. But FAO and partners are working together on the Save Food Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction. Because if we are to eradicate hunger, everybody involved in food supply chains -- from producers to consumers -- must change management practices, technologies and behavior.