Food loss and waste reduction and management - Advanced course

The Food loss and waste reduction and management advanced course follows a comprehensive approach, highlighting the importance of food loss and waste in current food systems, identifying main actors and critical points along the food supply chain and reviewing quantitative and qualitative approaches to assess food waste. Special attention is paid to ongoing and expected public and private initiatives to reduce food waste. The course combines theoretical considerations with case studies to review the landscape of food losses and waste in Mediterranean and other European countries.

The course is jointly organized by the International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies (CIHEAM), through the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Zaragoza (IAMZ), the EU H2020 funded project REFRESH (Resource Efficient Food and dRink for the Entire Supply cHain) and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). The course will take place at the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Zaragoza and will be given by well qualified lecturers from international and universities, NPOs, research centres, government departments and private companies in different countries.

The course will be held over a period of one week, from 21 to 25 January 2019, in morning and afternoon sessions.

The course is designed for 25 professionals with a university degree and is addressed to decision makers, administration officers, food producers, managers and marketers, technical advisors, researchers and NGO and NPO professionals working on or concerned with the implementation of programmes to reduce food loss and waste and in the alternatives for waste valorization. Given the diverse nationalities of the lecturers, knowledge of English, French or Spanish will be valued in the selection of candidates, since they will be the working languages of the course. The Organization will provide simultaneous interpretation of the lectures in these three languages.

Mireille Totobesola, project manager of the Rome-based UN agencies on "Mainstreaming food loss reduciton initiatives for smallholders in food deficit area" will be giving a lecture on ‘FAO FLW analysis and measurement approaches, and actions’.