While the issue of food losses and waste is certainly important from a resource management standpoint, it is still largely unknown how reducing losses and wastes can contibute to reducing food insecurity. Most of the work done on food insecurity indicate that total availability is not the core problem but access to food.
My first point is that we can see some direct links between reduction of losses during production and harvest and improved access to food, first and above all for the products which are directly consumed at farm level by the farmers, and then for the products which are sold through short distribution circuits (local markets). However in the first case, when it comes to food insecure food producers, losses are very limited and suually not due to harvest or post-harvest problems but due to production losses related to climatic and biological hazards. Food insecure farmers do not lose eadible products at harvesting time or at processing time in the household. They are too poor for that. So in the first case, gains will be marginal in terms of solving food insecurity. In the seocnd case (local markets) this will depend on the purchasing power of the local consumers and on the real impact on local prices loss reduction will provide. This is a complex issue where we cannot take fo granted that some percents in loss reduction will significantly impact on local food prices. The same is true for international prices. Let's assume that food availability increases by 10% due to a drastic reduction of losses by 70% (taking losses at 30% of total production) which is somehow a formidable challenge. Will that be enough to significantly reduce the price of agricultural products at consumer level, given the fact that in many cases the price of the raw material accoutns for less than 50% or even lesser of the retail price? Will that significantly increase the number of food secure people in the world? This requires at least more investigation and this investigation needs to be locally specific, it cannot be done through partial or general equilibrium models.
My second point is about waste reduction. Again what is needed here is a theory of change or an explanation of the links between waste reduction and reduced food insecurity. So far, nobody, as far as I know, has produced logical evidence that reducing waste (which are above all a problem of high income countries and wealthier consumers) will improve the situation of food insecure people whose access to food is limited by their purchasing power. Again waste management deals with total availability of food, but it does not affect access to food for the poorest and most food insecure, except through a potential price effect which, as I already indicated above, is more than uncertain.
Finally, I am not saying that better losses and waste management is not needed. What i am pointing out here is that we should not raise too much expectations about the impact of improved waste and losses management on food insecurity. I am in favor of clarifying how food insecurity issue can be adressed through loss and waste management issue (in my opinion very little) and in assessing the efficiency of loss and waste reduction policies for the reduction of food insecurity against the efficiency of other policies directly targetting food insecurity. This should be a necessary starting point of the study before making any kind of policy recommendations to policy makers.
Robin Bourgeois