Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

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    • Hello, FAO staff,

      Although my opinion is not directly related to the above topics, it is important for the secondary indicators to emerge from them.

      Known that, the food balance (FBS) methodology of FAO has been improved in many ways, but it seems that still has its disadvantages.

      According to the new food balances (FBS), highlighted as the new loss module is a linear hierarchical algorithm that imputes for losses across the whole value chain up to and excluding the. The hierarchy is based upon commodity and country groups. In addition, much more use is made of web scraping, text mining, and academic/research articles and publications. Thus, the historical loss percentages in the food balances are consistently being revised based upon the new findings.

      If we look at the relative losses in the example of potatoes for the country of India, we consider the data on old and new methodologies.

      Known that, India is the world's second-largest producer of potato, after China. Together, both countries contribute 38 percent to the world's total potato production. According to the estimation of FAO of loss in potatoes and products for India, it can be seen that 23.3 percent of the amount of potatoes and products, that is lost from total production (see attached table 1).

      According to information in the Report on the assessment of quantitative harvest and post-harvest losses of major crops and commodities in India, the total loss in potato is estimated at 7.32 percent for the study years 2012-2013. The conclusion is that there are significant differences between the data of international organizations and national organizations.

      Another important and noteworthy aspect of this information for India is that the share of losses from the whole production quantity of potatoes and products differs significantly not only from its neighboring countries but also almost all other countries of the world (see attached table 2).

      Moreover, in the new food balances (FBS) it is highlighted that an in-depth analysis has been carried out on the historical time series of stocks and a number of ‘unrealistic’ series (negative stock levels, or in excess of certain supply thresholds) have been discontinued and re-imputed, but it can be seen that there are still negative stock levels for some countries to the latest data.(see attached table 3)

      Hurriyat Khudoykulova,

      Freelance researcher (Ph.D)

      See the attachments: