Tackling food loss and waste — India’s opportunity

Meals loss and waste stay one of many world’s most persistent challenges, with extreme penalties for local weather, meals safety, financial prices, and sustainable use of pure sources. India produces sufficient to feed its inhabitants of 1.4 billion, but a big share of its produce is misplaced throughout the worth chain. Because the nation advances in direction of extra resilient, sustainable and environment friendly agrifood methods, tackling meals loss and waste can ship a triple win: strengthening meals safety and vitamin, lowering stress on pure sources and emissions, and enhancing incomes and productiveness. The Worldwide Day of Consciousness of Meals Loss and Waste, noticed yearly on September 29, highlights this chance for India.

India has already taken step one by producing nationally consultant knowledge.

India’s proof base, a world first

India is the one nation to have carried out three nationwide post-harvest loss surveys. The Ministry of Meals Processing Industries assessed losses throughout 45, 45, and 54 commodities in 2005-07, 2012-14, and 2020-22, respectively, overlaying the provision chain from farm to retail. The method for a fourth spherical is now beneath approach.

This sustained effort helps its reporting of the Meals Loss Index beneath the Sustainable Improvement Objectives. Nonetheless, these estimates cowl primarily losses on the farm and within the provide chain. Information on meals waste in retail, in resorts and eating places, and at family degree stays far much less developed.

The Meals and Agriculture Group of the United Nations (FAO) is working with the federal government, analysis and monetary establishments throughout India’s agrifood methods to translate the triple win from theme to follow. Producing proof, testing applied sciences and mobilising funding from farm to market to town have been the core of those initiatives.

When meals is misplaced, so are the sources used to supply it. Decreasing losses may also help India meet its local weather and resource-efficiency objectives whereas strengthening meals safety. The scope for lowering losses is best with higher storage, drying, cooling, moisture administration and processing. Digital instruments akin to traceability methods can additional enhance how meals is moved and managed by way of the provision chain.

Meals loss and waste have to be built-in extra systematically into agricultural planning, food-processing methods, local weather motion and funding choices. This implies directing finance in direction of applied sciences and infrastructure the place they will have the best affect, whereas making certain that options stay reasonably priced and accessible to farmers, producer organisations and small companies. Round approaches can add one other dimension. Surplus meals may be redistributed, whereas unavoidable natural residues may be transformed into compost, biogas or vitality, lowering waste and creating further financial worth.

Wholesale markets, ignored alternative

Assessments by the FAO and the Nationwide Council of Agriculture Advertising Boards (COSAMB) have discovered that main wholesale markets can generate as much as 100 tonnes of natural waste a day; in some cities as a lot as a fifth of all city natural waste reaches landfills. Nationally, this provides as much as an estimated 3.5 million tonnes a yr. It’s no waste stream however a useful resource base, which if handled, can offset roughly 3.3 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions yearly, or near $30 million in carbon credit.

A 50-tonne-a-day bio-CNG plant in Surat, Gujarat, has been run by way of a private-sector partnership for over 5 years and reportedly cuts methane-related emissions by about 7,500 tonnes a yr.

India can adapt such fashions to native situations, together with the commodity combine and infrastructure of various markets. Municipalities and market committees may also enhance organic-waste segregation, assortment and remedy, whereas creating markets for compost, biogas and different recovered supplies.

Funding and innovation

India should transfer from particular person interventions to a extra linked nationwide method with financing at its core. The FAO and the Small Industries Improvement Financial institution of India (SIDBI) are linking recognized food-loss hotspots with climate-resilient applied sciences akin to drying, moisture management, energy-efficient cooling and storage, whereas SIDBI is arranging finance to assist small and medium enterprises undertake them.

The FAO can be working to equip Indian cities with a sensible “Bundle of Practices” for city meals loss and waste administration, giving municipalities the instruments to measure, stop, scale back, redistribute and valorise waste throughout households, wholesale markets, retail and meals service.

India now has the info, expertise and viable fashions to scale back meals loss and waste. The precedence is to shut knowledge gaps, direct funding and make loss discount a part of agricultural, food-processing, city and local weather coverage.

Konda Chavva is Officer-in-Cost, FAO Illustration in India

Revealed – September 29, 2026 12:08 am IST