Food loss and waste (FLW) is a global burden with a negative impact on the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. The loss and waste of food suitable for human consumption hampers food security and nutrition and hinders the realization of the human right to ...

FAO online webinar to promote awareness of the various tools and methodologies.

Pulses are important in agricultural production systems, in managing soil fertility, reducing the adverse effects of climate change and enhancing resilience especially for the most vulnerable groups, especially women and children; in food and feed especially during lean periods in food- and nutrition-insecure countries. Furthermore, pulses are an important source of income for the most vulnerable households in developing countries around the world and account for a relatively large share of world trade through processing and marketing. Measures taken by countries to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic could likely increase exacerbate losses in pulses due to inappropriate harvest and post-harvest practices, ultimately contributing to reducing their availability and accessibility.

With physical distancing and reduced shopping trips to supermarkets, buying large quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables becomes difficult, with the risk of them going to waste, during this COVID-19 pandemic. There are, however, simple ways in which fruits and vegetables can be preserved at home to reduce waste. Many vegetables, can be blanched by dipping in boiling water for approximately 5 minutes and then pickled and fermented. Fruits can be preserved by blanching and freezing, juicing, drying, frying, or preserved with sugar into jams and fruit preserves.
Root crops and bananas can be fried to produce chips.

SDC-funded PHM projects are in their final phase, while one concluded a few years ago. All of these projects have had similar objectives and a shared thematic focus, using much the same approaches. Their common goal has been “to increase food security of smallholder farmers in SSA through reduced postharvest losses at farm and community level".

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) are jointly launching the e-learning course on Food Loss Analysis.

A workshop was held at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center (11-15 September 2017), inspired by discussions with the YieldWise Initiative, focused on market-based approaches to scale up successful Post-Harvest Management (PHM) experiences, drawing on lessons from Sub Saharan Africa (SSA). 

The African Development Bank, in collaboration with FAO, is organizing a High Level Ministerial Dialogue on Post-Harvest Losses Reduction and Agro-Processing (PHAP), to be held in Abidjan on 21-2...

Following a joint-event on the lessons learnt from a food loss reduction project implemented collaboratively by the Rome-based UN food agencies, the group called for the scaling up of pilot projects to adequately meet the required reduction in food loss.