Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan would like to provide the following recommendations to the coming draft of the HLPE report on Nutrition and Food Systems.
1. Food Losses and Waste
Food losses and waste are one of the critical issues for nutrition. According to the State of Food and Agriculture 2013 (FAO 2013, p.44), nutrients of food could deteriorate through storage, processing and distribution, which subsequently impairs the value of the food and causes food losses and waste.
Also, vegetables and fruits as well as fishes, which are important sources of micronutrients, are more perishable than staples such as rice and wheat. In order to provide diverse nutritious food to consumers, it is important to prevent food losses and waste by appropriate treatments and infrastructure through the food value chains such as the process of storage and processing as well as transportation.
However, according to FAO (2013, p.45), there are little evidences on the impact of the measures to reduce food losses and waste on nutrition. It would be thus worthwhile for HLPE’s report on Nutrition and Food System to further develop the discussions in FAO (2013) on the linkage between nutrition and reduction in food losses and waste.
2. Public-Private Partnership
Tackling malnutrition requires strong collaboration among stakeholders in the food system, being consisted of producers, processors, traders, retailers and consumers as well as the government. The private sector often has advanced knowledge and research capabilities on nutrition. It would thus be more effective for the government to involve the private sector and further build on their existing efforts than to start everything from scratch. Therefore, analyzing cases and impact of public-private partnership and international platforms (such as Scale Up Nutrition) on nutrition would be valuable in this report.
3. Conclusion
Against the background, we would like to propose to include the following points in the coming draft HLPE report.
・ Impacts of the practices to reduce food losses and waste on nutrition
・ Good practices to reduce food losses and waste through food systems, which contribute to tackling malnutrition
・ Case studies on PPP practices to tackle malnutrition and analyses on their impacts on nutrition
Yoji Matsui