Lesson 1: By countries, percentage of waste.

Developing countries suffer large post-crop losses right at the beginning of the food supply chain due to inadequate technology, transportation infrastructure, storage and cooling facilities, and extreme weather events.

• Developing countries contain 44% of global food waste and food losses (Lipinski et al., 2013).
• In developing countries, 40% of food losses occur in harvesting and processing (FAO 2016).
• Interventions in these systems focus on technology training and upgrading to reduce losses, improve efficiency, and reduce the intensity of labor employed by technology (Parfitt et al., 2010).

Developed countries experience most of their food waste at the end of the supply chain as food becomes plentiful and consumers become wealthier, more demanding and more wasteful.

• 40% of food loss occurs at the level of businesses and consumers (FAO 2016)
• Every year, consumers in rich countries waste as much food – 222 million tons – as the entire food production network of sub-Saharan Africa (Gustavsson et al., 2011).
• Consumer food waste per capita is equivalent to 95-115kg per year in Europe and North America (Gustavsson et al., 2011).
• 89 million tons of food are wasted per year in Europe (173kg per capita) (Fusions, 2016).
• The total percentage of food lost or wasted varies between 15% and 25% in most regions. The only exceptions are North America and Oceania, where the percentage rises to 42% (Lipinski et al., 2013).

• Spain 🇪🇸- 7.7 million tons per year (176 kg per capita) (Menos Desperdicio, 2019).
• Italy 🇮🇹- 7.8 million tons per year (130 kg per capita) (Eurostat, 2016).
• United Kingdom 🇬🇧- 10.2 million tons per year (156 kg per capita) (WRAP, 2018).
• Denmark 🇩🇰- 716,000 tons per year (124 kg per capita) (DTU, 2017).
• Norway 🇳🇴- 385,000 tons per year (73 kg per capita) (Matvett, 2017).
• France 🇫🇷- 10 million tons per year (155 kg per capita) (Le Monde, 2018).
• Germany 🇩🇪- 11 million tons per year (137 kg per capita) (BMEL, 2019).
• Netherlands 🇳🇱- 2.5 million tons per year (152 kg per capita) (Samen tegen Voedselverspilling, 2015).
• Belgium 🇧🇪 – 3.8 million tons per year (345 kg per capita) (Roels & Van Gijseghem, 2011).
• Poland 🇵🇱 – 9 million tons per year (236 kg per capita) (CEFO, 2017).
• Switzerland 🇨🇭- 2.6 million tons per year (310 kg per capita) (BAFU, 2019).

• United States 🇺🇸- 126 million tons per year (415 kg per capita) (CEC, 2017).
• Canada 🇨🇦- 11.2 million tons per year (303 kg per capita) (Second Harvest, 2019).
• Mexico 🇲🇽- 20 million tons per year (155 kg per capita) (FAO, 2018).

• Australia 🇦🇺- 7.3 million tons per year (298 kg per capita) (Department of the Environment and Energy, 2017).
• Japan 🇯🇵- 6 million tons per year (43 kg per capita) (FAO, 2017).
• China 🇨🇳- 61 million tons per year (44 kg per capita) (The Magnet, 2018).
• South Korea 🇰🇷- 4.8 million tons per year (95 kg per capita) (The Magnet, 2018).

Agroforestry is a practice combining the planting of trees with crops to exploit the ecological and economic interactions of the different components.

• It is widely adopted as a climate-friendly technique considering its potentials for climate change mitigation, adaptation, crop productivity and food security.
• Agroforestry enhances soil organic matter (SOM), agriculture productivity, carbon sequestration, water retention, agrobiodiversity and farmers’ income.
• Tree components in crop fields act as windbreaks and shelter belts, reducing the severity of extreme weather events such as floods, hurricanes and tropical storms.
• Agroforestry is a worldwide practice as a land-use management system but widespread in tropical regions.
• Dehesa system of Spain is a traditional agroforestry system with animal components. In this system, area under forest canopy is cleared by grazing to use it as cropland.
• Integration of animals into farming systems not only provide milk and meat but also recycle their feed into manure that enhances the carbon sequestration.

Source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40974-017-0074-7

• Cover cropping
• Green manures
• Animal manures
• Integrated Weed Management
• Livestock Management