Agricultural development addresses food loss and waste while reducing greenhouse gas emissions Galford, Gillian L; Peña, Olivia; Sullivan, Amanda K; Nash, Julie; Gurwick, Noel; Pirolli, Gillian; Richards, Meryl; White, Julianna; Wollenberg, Eva Food loss and waste (FLW) reduce food available for consumption and increase the environmental burden of production. Reducing FLW increases agricultural and value-chain productivity and may reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with feeding the global population. Although studies of interventions that reduce FLW exist, almost no research systematically investigates FLW interventions across multiple value chains or countries, most likely due to challenges in collecting and synthesizing data and estimates, let alone estimating greenhouse gas emissions. Our research team investigated changes in FLW in projects supported by the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) global hunger and food security initiative, Feed the Future. This was a unique opportunity to conduct ex-ante estimates of the impacts of FLW interventions across 20 value chains in 12 countries, based on project documents and interviews with USAID and project staff. This paper describes specific interventions in each value chain and country context, providing insight to interventions that decrease FLW at multiple points along food value chains, from upstream producer-dominated stages to downstream consumer-dominated stages. Amongst the sub-sectors studied, FLW interventions directed at extensive dairy systems could decrease FLW by 4–10%, providing meaningful greenhouse gas mitigation, since these systems are both emission-intensive and experience high FLW. More modest emissions reductions were found for other key agricultural products, including maize, rice, vegetables, fruits and market goods.

This paper examines the potential for improved environmental performance of smallholder aquaculture production through ‘beyond-farm’ governance. Smallholder aquaculture farmers face a range of systemic environmental risks related to disease and water quality that extend beyond the boundary of their farms. Yet most governance arrangements aimed at mitigating risks, such as certification, finance and insurance, are focused on the farm-level rather than the wider landscape within which farming takes place. In this paper we propose an integrated approach to area-based management of aquaculture risks that integrates collective action, risk assurance and transfer, and inclusive value chains. In doing so, we set a new research agenda for the integrated governance of mitigating production risks and producer vulnerability in global food production.

Carlos Barragan García works on soil fertility as well as inclusive business models for smallholder farmers working in maize agri-food value chains.

Adoption of new varieties can never be successful until efficient seed delivery systems are in place. To increase the efficacy and impact of the existing ‘seed revolving fund initiative’ for groundnut and sorghum crops a decision to form a steering committee was taken at a recent AVISA project meeting in Tanzania. The Tanzanian seed sector […]

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