Reduce

Reducing food loss and food waste is a crucial step towards transitioning to circular food systems. It holds enormous potential to improve food and nutrition security for people, alleviate pressure on climate, as well as on water and land resources, and improve incomes and livelihoods.

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 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 12.3 under SDG 12 that seeks to reduce food losses along production and supply chain (including postharvest 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 food producers and better savings for consumers and less pressure on land and water ecosystems with reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

With a food systems lens, we adopt a widely accepted Target-Measure-Act approach for reducing food loss and food waste and work with diverse actors across food supply chain from production to consumption, through:

• Bridging research gaps through systematic evidence building, for example, through commodity-specific supply chain research on causes, impact and solutions across the food supply chain,
• Building capacities of diverse stakeholders involved in food supply chain from production to consumption,
• Creating a widescale awareness on social, environmental and economic impacts of food loss and 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

• Tomato Trail: Tracking Food Loss and Food Waste in Madhya Pradesh
• Catalyzing actions to reduce food loss and food waste in Maharashtra
• Catalyzing actions to reduce food loss and food waste in Madhya Pradesh
• Dialogue on Strategies to Reduce Food Waste in Indore City
• 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

WRI India Blogs

• Defining Food Waste for Sustainable Food Systems
• Tracking Tomatoes from Plough to Plate

Food Loss and Waste Digest

• Food Loss & Waste Digest -Vol. 1 

Short Films