Project title: IndoDutch taskforce against food loss and waste (INTAFLOW)
Project number: SMP-2028
Requesting country: India
Year: 2020
Budget: € 40,000
Project leader: Heike Axmann
Knowledge institute: Wageningen University & Research
Project partners: Aries Agro, CA Technology Group / Van Amerongen, Foundation Food Waste United, Govt. of Telangana-SKLTHU, ICRISAT, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare-GoI, NIFTEM, SCA Group, UN World Food Program India, UN World Food Program India, Vivia Foundation Netherlands

Summary
Food security is a prevailing issue in India. Over 194 million Indians are undernourished and about 7 million children died because of hunger or malnutrition. In contrast, India is producing sufficient food to feed everyone, but over 40% of the food produced is lost or wasted along the supply chain or at consumer level. The total value is estimated to be around € 6,- billion per year. The UN sustainable development goal 12.3 specifically focuses on this and the following aim ‘By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses’.

Reducing food losses and waste, primarily through prevention, has enormous potential for ensuring sustainable food and nutrition security, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and lessening environmental impacts by improved resource use efficiency. Nonetheless, reducing food losses and waste all along the agri-food value chain is not straightforward, as the problem is a result of manifold and highly interlinked causes. Much is known about the causes and many innovative solutions are already available.

Recently the World Resource Institute published two reports on the reduction of food loss and waste; setting a global action agenda and ten interventions to scale impact. Both reports call on governments, companies, farmers, consumers and other involved institutes to ‘Develop national strategies for reducing food loss and waste’ and ‘create national public-private partnerships to tackle food loss and waste’. The report builds upon the results, experiences and tools developed within REFRESH (Resource Efficient Food and Drink for the Entire Supply Chain, www.eu-refresh.org) which was Wageningen Research.

Although there are Initiatives around reducing food loss and waste in India like ShareFood and OperationGreens, a national strategy with strong public private partnerships could accelerate the food waste fight and scale up current & future initiatives to maximise their impact. The INTAFLOW project aims to contribute to the setting up a Taskforce with the goal to reduce food loss and waste in India.

Presentation