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A mini review on "Improving data on food losses and waste: From theory to practice"

Franck Cachia, Carola Fabi*, Piero Conforti, Jose Rosero Moncayo

This article is a review of the article ?Improving Data on Food Losses and Waste: from theory to practice? published in Food Policy (vol. 98, January 2021). In this article, the authors discuss the main conceptual frameworks proposed for informing the measurement of food losses, present the most recent quantitative evidence, and sketch out a number of steps aimed at gathering internationally comparable policy relevant information. The quantitative evidence presented by the authors of this article confirm: the importance of losses for perishable crops such as fruits and vegetables, with median losses of 6.4% compared to 2.7%-3.8% for other crops; the higher losses in low middle income regions, with 10%-15% median losses for example for fruits and vegetables, compared to 4%-7% for Europe and North America. The authors also stress that while the evidence on food losses has increased in the past few years, information gaps remain important and the comparison of results across countries or even between sectors within countries remain delicate or simply impossible. Acknowledging that some of these gaps are the result of insufficient coordination between different initiatives, they propose operational frameworks to better integrate the work of the different institutions involved in FLW. This review briefly introduces the concepts, evidence and international initiatives on food losses brought forward by the authors (Chapter 1), present and discuss the main conceptual frameworks that underpin the measurement of food losses (Chapter 2) along with the most recent quantitative evidence (Chapter 3). Chapter 4 discusses the main policy implications identified by the authors and Chapter 5 concludes.