Adoption of food loss and waste-reducing interventions in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

The target of the Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 calls for halving per capita food loss and waste (FLW) by 2030. During the past decade, the reduction of FLW gained much attention from research in its context of food security and environmental impact. Worldwide, in developed and less developed countries governments and supply chain stakeholders are putting in effort to achieve this goal along supply chains and across product categories. What can be learned from these efforts? In this paper interventions to reduce FLW are discussed, with a focus on Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMIC) in Sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia – countries with high losses in early stages of food value chains. Interventions are characterized, structured and evaluated based on literature and a framework is presented to evaluate their effectiveness and context appropriateness to prevent FLW at the local, regional, and national levels, by focusing on factors determining the likelihood of an FLW-reducing intervention being successfully adopted. This paper illustrates the framework using four case studies from Nigeria, Benin, and Indonesia. An important consideration for FLW interventions within the LMIC context, is the observation that economic drivers are predominant over other considerations on feasibility and implementation. This publication is intended to support the scientific and practitioners’ communities as well as governmental organisations with insights on the design of interventions within the setting of LMICs.