In this Step, you’ll take a closer look at six stakeholder groups that influence on-farm food loss, see Figure 1. You’ll notice some stakeholders are not directly involved with food production. This highlights how decisions taken at any stage in the food system can impact on on-farm food loss.

Figure 1: Six stakeholder groups that influence on-farm food loss.

Who can make change

Let’s look in more detail at how these six stakeholder groups can influence food loss.

Farmers

• Planting decisions, such as over-planting to ensure quotas are met, can result in crops being left unharvested
• Decisions around when to harvest based on ripeness, market price and availability of workers and equipment
• Financial decisions around purchasing and maintaining equipment and machinery

Agricultural workers

• Availability of temporary or seasonal workers or farm employees
• Impacts on harvesting and immediate post-harvest processing
• Knowledge and application of handling and processing methods to reduce damage

Retailers

• Rejecting food if it doesn’t meet strict internal specifications that go beyond public food safety requirements
• Setting quotas can lead to surplus crops left unharvested
• Decisions relating to promotional strategies and demand forecasts

Consumers

• Acceptance of imperfect produce e.g. fruit that has marks or blemishes
• Willingness to buy unfamiliar varieties of fruit and vegetables
• Willingness to buy cuts of meat or fish they are not used to cooking and eating

Policy makers

• Work and labour policies, such as maximum working hours and minimum pay levels
• Visa and immigration policies affecting worker availability, for example around seasonal labour needs
• Impact on markets for crop prices and prices of agricultural equipment and materials (e.g. fertilisers and pesticides)

Agricultural technology developers

• Developing equipment or software to support harvesting, reduce crop/production damage and measure food loss
• Monitoring systems for crops and livestock to improve their health and growth

Of course, there are more than six stakeholder groups. Can you think of other groups that might influence food loss? You could consider the role of food processors, food transporters or researchers. And it is also worthwhile reflecting on how different stakeholders can work together. For example, individual farms may form co-operatives to increase selling power, share equipment and work collectively (for example during harvest).

In the next Step, you’ll explore what changes could be made.

Resources

• Short film from the FAO on Food Loss and Food Waste FAO Policy Series: Food Loss & Food Waste hosted on YouTube.
• Wide range of resources and information focussing on food loss from the FAO including Introduction to Food Loss, Technical Platform on the Measurement and Reduction of Food Loss and Waste and a collection of resources exploring reducing food loss in a range of crop species.
• Driven to Waste: The Global Impact of Food Loss and Waste on Farms from the WWF explores the global scale and environmental impacts of on-farm food loss.
• WWF-UK (2022) Hidden Waste: The scale and impact of food waste in UK primary production.
• A critical review of on-farm food loss and waste: future research and policy recommendations is an open access article: “Firstly, it provides a stock-take of on-farm food loss and waste definitions, quantification methods, causes and management options. Secondly, it provides researchers, policy makers and industry stakeholders with recommendations on opportunities to be pursued”.