FAO workshop drives progress against food loss and waste with data

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), together with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries & Mining, havs embarked upon a data-driven approach to tackle food loss and waste issues across the agriculture supply chain through a virtual FLW Measurement and Reporting workshop held last Wednesday.

Agriculture stakeholders from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries & Mining, Rural Agricultural Development Authority and the FAO Statistics Division convened to explore a practical methodology for the Food Loss and Waste Index. This will provide a structured framework to define, design and implement food-loss data collection that enables countries to monitor and report towards SDG Indicator 12.3.1.a Food Loss Index, as well as towards national targets set.

The FLW index will allow Jamaica to assess the current levels of food loss and waste across the supply chain, from production to consumption. This will provide clear understanding of where and why food is being lost, enabling the agriculture sector to identify the most critical areas to address. The activity is aligned with the FAO Regional Initiative on Sustainable Diets and Food Systems, which supports Latin American and Caribbean countries in reducing FLW.

“The establishment of a Food Loss and Waste Index provides us with an invaluable tool. It enables us to quantitatively assess the extent of food loss and waste across our agricultural supply chain – from the fields where our farmers toil, to the plates of our consumers,” said Dr Crispim Moreira, FAO representative for Jamaica,

Carola Fabi, senior statistician within the FAO Statistics Division, noted that despite Food Loss and waste being the least reported SDG indicator it “is connected to so many indicators and crucial to understanding the resilience of food systems”.

Fabi further said that the topic interacts in many ways with the sustainability and efficiency of the food system, including the food security dimension and the economic dimension of the food chain.

“What Jamaica is doing to embark on the measurement, this will really help, especially for an island where the food chain is not very long. We are happy that this project is taking place and that the country is not only committing to strategising, but also to measuring the data,” said the statistician.

Sheridon Wisdom, acting director of the Agricultural Services Unit in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries & Mining, acknowledged the gaps in addressing FLW while noting the ministry’s ongoing activities.

“As a nation we have to ensure we increase our production and the key to our food and nutrition security is not only producing more, but also consuming and utilising more of what we produce. We would have realised that approximately 20 per cent to 30 per cent of food is wasted, and, as such, as a ministry we are targetting to reduce this as much as possible,” said Wisdom.

“We want to reduce loss and waste along each supply chain thereby securing Jamaica’s food and nutrition security. We want to map the critical loss points where food is lost in Jamaica to ensure we can better guide our policy decisions.”

The ministry’s current efforts to reduce FLW include targetted post-harvest training to farmers for specific crops, sensitisation forums for middlemen and purveyors, improved storage facilities as well as increased number of cold and ambient storage facilities.