Dear all,
After reviewing the paper and the contributions already posted in the websites, I have found that the paper lacks the inclusion of safety aspects of food and agrosystem and only focuses on the reducing losses and wastes. I think we can include the follwing comments
1) The major obstacles in the least developed countries like Nepal is the lack of infrastructure. This has not only lead to huge amount of food losses during the distribution channel but also resulted in serious health problems. Poor refrigeration system due to frequent power cut has made the enterpreneur to use the sodium hydroxide as neutralizer in milk. This, in the view of preventing the possible loss of milk, has put the public health a serious threat.
2) The excessive use of pesticides in order to protect them from the possible damage of pests has resulted the pollution of the whole agro-ecosystem and the consumption of such vegetables has resulted in increased number of hospital cases.
3) The focus is to be given to the awareness programs and education to make more people aware on food security and food safety issues. For example in the mountainous districts of Nepal, the availability of locally produced crops and tubers and fruits and vegetable can help in reducing their hunger problem but "the mere fond of rice attitude" made them parasite to depend on the white rice to be transported by government in subsidy. So the subsidy policy should be revised and encouraging the local production should be promoted.
4) Another important thing is the stamping the expiry date on several processed food without proper research about their shelf life. It made the regulatory body to destroy the food product, may be prior to the real consumable period. So the provision for expiry date has to be revised or enforced scientifically.
Yakindra Timilsena