Reduce
Reducing food loss and food waste is a crucial step towards transitioning to sustainable food systems. It holds enormous potential to improve food and nutrition security for people, ease pressure on our land and water ecosystems, prevent economic losses, improve incomes and reduce emissions from intensive food production.
Envisioning a resilient and sustainable food system for India, the ‘Reduce’ team works on developing equitable strategies to minimize food loss and food waste across the food supply chain. Reducing food loss and food waste offers India an opportunity to achieve Target 12.3 under Sustainable Development Goal 12 that seeks to halve per capita food waste at the retail and consumer level while also reducing losses along food production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses, by 2030. This can help to provide nutritious, affordable and sustainable food for people, thus improving their food and nutrition security, better incomes for both food producers and consumers and less pressure on land and water ecosystems with reduced green-house gas emissions.
With a food systems lens, we work with diverse actors across food supply chains to inform reduction of losses and reduce wastage of food from farm gates to consumers’ plates, through:
- Bridging research gaps through systematic evidence building, for example through commodity specific supply chain research on causes and solutions across the food supply chain,
- Building capacities of diverse stakeholders involved in food supply chain between its production to consumption,
- Creating a widescale awareness on social, environmental and economic impacts of food waste,
- Building multi-stakeholder collaboration and champions within governments, businesses, and civil societies, and
- Fostering coordinated action on the issue through a national level network on the Friends of Champions 12.3 Network in India and regional network in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra that brings together like-minded companies and organizations committed towards food loss and food waste reduction..
Featured Resources
- Working paper on Food Loss and Waste in India: The Knowns and The Unknowns
- T20 Policy Brief on Reducing Food Loss and Waste: Enabling Action Through the Target-Measure-Act Approach
- Friends of Champions 12.3 India
- Co-creating pathways to reduce food losses in the tomato supply chain in Madhya Pradesh
- Stakeholder consultation on inspiring and mobilizing action to reduce food losses in retail supply chains
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