Study on food loss in India published
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has carried out extensive studies on the topic of food losses in various districts of India between May and July 2016, which was made possible by the membership fees of the Save Food initiative.
The scientific work targets all stages of the value chain for chickpeas, mangos, milk and rice, quantifies the losses and outlines approaches for counter measures. As a first step the researchers sift existing data from numerous Indian research institutes in the food or agricultural sector to then gain further insights from field studies. To this end, farmers, processors, wholesalers and retailers as well as forwarders and storage operators were scientifically interviewed. In addition to this, shipments on the transport routes were tracked in order to record the quantities.
Studies of this type are an important prerequisite for mitigating food losses in a targeted manner, because these constitute a major problem especially in developing countries with the result that a major part of the produced food never food never reaches consumers. In an ideal case the insights gained can be transferred to other categories of food or similar markets applying generally valid mechanisms. The study is about approaches related to the building of capacities along the supply chain, the targeted use of technologies but also training for producers, about setting up local warehouse storage and distribution centres as well as creating general awareness about greater efficiency and sustainability.
