Sammanfattning

Food waste undermines long-term resilience of the global food system by aggravating ecosystem damage. The global community must therefore work to reduce the amount of food that gets wasted. However, we should be mindful of some potential conflicts between food waste reduction and food system resilience. Over-production and over-supply are a contributing cause of waste, yet they also provide resilience in the form of redundancy. In this paper, we examine individual interventions designed to minimise food waste by scoring their impact on different aspects of resilience. We find that there are strong synergistic elements and interventions that support short- and long-term resilience, such as improved storage, which reduces the need to provide a constant flow of ‘surplus food’ and replaces it with a stock of ‘spare’ food. Some interventions carry a risk of trade-offs due to possible losses of redundancy, and investment lock-in that may reduce the ability of farmers to adapt by changing what and where they farm. Trade-offs do not mean that those interventions should not be pursuit, but they should be recognised so that can be adequately addressed with complimentary actions. This review underlines the necessity of food-systems thinking and joined-up policy.

Nyckelord

Food waste; Resilience; Food sustainability; Interventions; Food policy

Publicerad i

Ecosystem Services
2020, Volym: 45, artikelnummer: 101140

SLU författare

• Bajzelj, Bojana

  • Institutionen för energi och teknik, Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet
    

• Röös, Elin

  • Institutionen för energi och teknik, Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet
    

Associerade SLU-program

Food Waste


Globala målen

SDG2 Avskaffa hunger, uppnå tryggad livsmedelsförsörjning och förbättrad nutrition samt främja ett hållbart jordbruk
SDG12 Säkerställa hållbara konsumtions- och produktionsmönster


UKÄ forskningsämne

Livsmedelsvetenskap


Publikationens identifierare

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2020.101140

Permanent länk till denna sida (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/107905