Understanding policy

When food is lost in the primary production stage, it can impact the whole food supply system and challenge the provision of global food security. Food loss has negative impacts on the environmental, societal and economic sustainability of the food system. Therefore, there are global efforts to reduce these impacts through a range of public and private policies that can be categorised as:

• Hard instruments (e.g. regulations, economic/financial measures)
• Soft instruments (e.g. voluntary initiatives, knowledge exchange)

These policies can be applied at different levels: globally, by unions of countries (e.g. the EU) or at individual country/regional level. Often they are combined with actions across the food system to reduce food loss and waste. You’ll learn about some of them below and consider how they are implemented to achieve an impact.

Global

Figure 1: Sustainable Development Goals ©UN. Click to expand diagram.

The drive to reduce food loss is core to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 12 – to ensure sustainable consumption and production by 2030 (UN, 2015). Specifically, one of the globally agreed targets (12.3) is

“By 2030, to halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest”.

There are currently many ways to draw the boundaries around what constitutes food loss and waste, with different definitions from the United Nations organisations (FAO, UNEP), the EU and others. A global reporting standard was created to support the development of standardised inventories to generate comparable data and build awareness to drive actions. However, the Food Loss and Waste Accounting and Reporting Standard (Food Loss + Waste Protocol, 2016) currently excludes pre-harvest food losses.

European Union

The EU responded to the UN’s SDG goal by integrating food loss and waste into the Farm to Fork strategy as part of the European Green Deal (the EU’s sustainable and inclusive strategy for growth). This sets out regulatory and non-regulatory initiatives within the Common Agricultural Policy. The EU committed to investigating food loss at the production stage and exploring ways to reduce these losses as well as integrating food loss prevention into other EU policies.

Figure 2. Illustrative diagram of the Farm to Fork Strategy aims. © European Union, 1995-2024

The EU set out an overarching definition for food waste in the 2018 amendment to the EU Waste Framework Directive. It also has an agreement to measure and report data on food waste. However, the EU definition of ‘food’ excludes unharvested products. This means any loss or waste prior to or during harvest is not currently captured. The FOLOU project therefore seeks to provide a distinct definition for food loss. This is a vital step towards harmonising policy and action to reduce losses in primary production.

In order to share the data that are gathered, the EU Platform for Food Losses and Food Waste brings together reports on actions. To further support this coordinated effort, the Food Loss and Waste Prevention Hub was created to support all stakeholders as part of the knowledge exchange activities around food loss. However, it’s down to individual companies and countries to use this information to develop their own strategies and implement policy mechanisms to achieve these aims.

The Champions 12.3 coalition suggest a ‘target-measure-act’ approach.

• Target: set ambitions
• Measure: identify food loss ‘hot spots’ and take measurements to be able to monitor and track progress against targets
• Act: use measurements to take collaborative action

Implementation

There are examples of policies that have been developed at country (or regional) level. In general, food loss and waste are considered together. Most EU countries have implemented the Waste Framework Directive in their national waste legislation and many have also developed national food waste prevention programmes with stakeholder engagement, but there are only a few legal instruments in place. One leading example is from Catalonia (an autonomous community of Spain) where a pioneering law was adopted in 2020. The law is aimed at reducing food loss and waste and includes a requirement to quantify food loss.

It’s clear there are a range of policies and initiatives underway to try to understand, define and reduce food loss. The emphasis throughout all of these policies is to work in partnership, across the public and private sectors, and to engage everyone in these efforts. The right to adequate food is a fundamental human right, therefore it is ethically incumbent on wider society to undertake these collective actions to ensure equitable access to an affordable, nutritious food supply for all.

Are you aware of any policies, strategies or initiatives for food loss reduction in your country? What else might help your country meet the SDG 12.3 target? Share your thoughts in the Comment area below.