On the occasion of the national Food Waste Prevention Day, we analysed the various stages of the supply chain to understand where the most food is wasted and how.
5 February is the national Food Waste Prevention Day, established in 2015 by agro-economist Andrea Segrè, professor of international and comparative agricultural policy at the University of Bologna and founder of the Last Minute Market project. It is a day dedicated to prevention which, as Segrè says, is the key word for tackling a problem that weighs on the planet as much as 23 million forty-tonne lorries left unused. We are talking about more than 900 million tonnes of wasted food. Globally, the land used every year to produce food that is subsequently wasted amounts to 1.4 billion hectares of cultivable surface area (FAO Report 2013 — later cited by Segrè in 2022 in "L'insostenibile pesantezza dello spreco alimentare").
The paradox of a world in which more than 828 million people suffer from malnutrition and 1.6 billion individuals are overweight or obese.
Our relationship with food is as indispensable as it is disharmonious, and it often fails to take into account the supply chain in its entirety. From the fields to our tables, the distance between each link is either too long or too short, bringing a great many factors into play and making it difficult to act ex ante rather than post hoc. For this reason, collaboration between the actors at the various levels of the supply chain (producers, large-scale retailers, the restaurant sector, but also government bodies, associations and individual citizens) becomes all the more essential, so that surplus food, when produced, finds its proper place and is recognised by all as a common good.
The agri-food supply chain is the journey food makes from sowing to final consumption, and it involves several stages at which losses or waste are generated, depending on where they occur. Food losses concern the earlier stages of the supply chain, covering the cultivation of the product, the harvest, transport and any processing. The FAO has estimated that fourteen per cent of food is lost at this level globally. Food waste, on the other hand, encompasses large and small-scale retail (supermarkets, markets, shops), the restaurant sector and domestic consumption, which is responsible for 11 per cent of waste.
In Italy, legislation has been drawn up such as Law 155/2003, known as the "Good Samaritan" law, which allows commercial establishments to donate unsold goods for charitable purposes. In 2016, the legislation was taken up by MP Maria Chiara Gadda with Law 166/2016, known as the "Legge Gadda", which simplifies the donation process and introduces environmental objectives. Furthermore, to date there are 216 cities around the world (including Milan) that have a Food Policy office within their local authority, to promote more sustainable food systems in their territory, combat food waste and safeguard biodiversity.
It is fairly complicated to quantify the losses that occur in agriculture, since any surplus left in the field can become nourishment for the soil, and because agricultural losses are often the result of extreme weather events, infestations, fungi and plant diseases. In the West, one aspect of agricultural losses concerns rejection for aesthetic reasons (the kind that require a kiwi fruit, for example, to have a standard minimum weight of 62 grams, discarding all lighter specimens). Alternatively, losses can be caused by market prices, since the cost of production is often too high relative to the expected return.
"We have always tried to produce according to the season, selling whatever the land gave us, but market prices are too low for our oranges — they barely reach six cents a kilogram. With ninety trees we can hardly make 500 euros; how are we supposed to pay for all the work that goes into a harvest?" The speaker is Gaetano Buccheri, a partner at Azienda Agricola Buccheri, near Syracuse. "Our oranges are imperfect because we try to use as few products as possible. So they may not look perfect, but they are healthy. The market, though, wants them flawless and cheap. Oranges weighing less than 700 grams are wanted by almost no one, not even those who make juices or cold-pressed drinks… and even if they were, they would pay even less for them," he continues. The market is the real enemy of producers, who frequently find it more convenient to leave produce sitting in stock rather than harvest it. Competition from abroad also has a considerable impact: it can happen that products from other countries are cheaper than local ones. "To prevent waste and avoid having surplus stock, you need to understand clearly how much to produce and for whom. It's not just money at stake, but also human and natural resources — you cannot afford to lose them."
"Organic fruit and vegetable production differs from conventional farming on many fronts, but on the question of waste it is important first of all to distinguish large producers from small ones." Yukai Ebisuno, co-owner of the agricultural cooperative Villaggio Verde, in the province of Novara, opens his reflection on preventing food losses at the agricultural stage in this way. "You have to understand how much to sow and, above all, how much to harvest. There will always be a 'tax' to pay to nature — around ten per cent of the previous harvest — so that the land can yield new crops. However, planning errors are the most damaging and must be avoided upstream, already at the end of the previous season. This is true even for small-scale farming like ours, though it is still difficult to gauge real demand," he adds.
Villaggio Verde is located within a residential community established in the 1980s: two hectares of cultivable land in a particular environmental setting — that of the woods — which allows for a unique type of farming. First and foremost, the woods act as a "filter" for all the airborne particles arriving from outside; they also necessitate a type of "bio-intensive cultivation", as Yukai calls it, where companion planting and intercropping are the only way to cope with the limited agricultural space. For example, cutting radicchio, chard and mixed greens above the collar, rather than harvesting them at full maturity, allows the plants to regenerate without having to till the soil again. Yukai reminds me that one of the criticisms levelled at organic farming concerns the discarding of certain parts of the produce, because they are damaged. "In conventional farming too, however, all the outer leaves are discarded because they've been 'sprayed' with synthetic chemical pesticides," he says. "For us, preserving the plant, the soil, the woods, is equivalent to not wasting important resources. If the price to pay is the odd nibbled leaf, the stakes aren't really that high."
"Product imperfection is inherent to our company mission," declares Gianluca Gennaro, operations manager for Babaco Market. This anti-waste e-commerce platform buys ugly-but-good produce from farmers and resells it to customers in boxes. "All the fruit and vegetables that have no place in 'normal' distribution channels are perfect for ours — we want to solve the problem of overproduction. The most satisfying part of my job is making the producers who choose to work with us happy. My aim is to give value to what they do, to build relationships of trust" (and cross-cutting relationships along the supply chain, adding indispensable links to its sustainability, ed.), adds Francesca Bonacina, purchasing manager. "To put a box together, we start precisely from what our suppliers need: priority goes to whoever has an emergency, whoever knows they can't place the product in question through other channels and would be forced to get rid of it. Normally, five per cent of what passes through quality control at large-scale retail is rejected," Francesca continues. "Generally, first-grade produce is what agreements are built around; second-grade is more problematic."
Babaco's purchasing forecast, by contrast, is based on the number of customer subscriptions: each week, only what can be resold is purchased, so as to prevent waste. "There's always a surplus of around six per cent, which is used to 'pad out' the boxes a little, or donated through additional channels such as the Red Cross. For producers, making field forecasts is harder — the solution lies in the distribution purchasing model," she concludes.
Gruppo Orsero is the leader in the distribution of fresh fruit and vegetables in Mediterranean Europe. Each year it trades over 750,000 tonnes of fruit and vegetables from 1,500 suppliers worldwide. Speaking with Gaia Cacciabue, sustainability manager at Orsero, I found confirmation that the fight against food waste at this level of the supply chain is nonetheless a delicate balance, especially when it comes to fresh produce. Orsero's strategy rests on two pillars: prevention and recovery. The company has set itself precise but extremely challenging targets, among them testing one process or product innovation dedicated to combating waste every year. "There are very few projects that genuinely work on prevention — for example, finding ways to extend the shelf life of products during transport and storage," says Gaia. "In Mexico we have launched a partnership with Apeel, which has developed an innovative solution capable of slowing down the ripening of avocados, thanks to a plant-based 'second skin'." This technology can only be applied to a limited number of product types, so it only partly addresses the problem, despite representing a major step forward.
As regards recovery at the distribution stage, work is focused on warehouses and market stands within wholesale fruit and vegetable markets, to salvage what can be saved before it becomes waste. "We collaborate with local organisations such as Recup Aps in Milan, or the FoodBack project, embedded in the Mercabarna wholesale fruit and vegetable market in Barcelona, so that surpluses can be redistributed; also in Barcelona, we have a partnership with Es Imperfect, a social enterprise that makes preserves and jams from unsold fruit and vegetables." The main challenge with recovery activities is the time factor, since the products are highly perishable. Moreover, if some items show signs of mould, entire pallets risk being contaminated, making them impossible to use. The variability factor also plays a role, because the quantity and nature of surpluses changes constantly, making a steady programme with recovery partners almost impossible to plan. To put it plainly, distributing a tonne of courgettes is a very different matter from distributing a tonne of lettuce, and there is a risk of simply "shifting" the waste to the domestic consumption level.
Trolleys are always either too full or too empty — they lack balance. Three-for-two, two-for-one deals: it's hard to resist the marketing. How do supermarkets really work? And by what criteria do they buy, donate, or throw things away? With Veronica Corchia, external relations and CSR manager at Conad Centro Nord, I discussed the life cycle of products and how much shorter the supply chain would need to be for them to stay as fresh as possible. Food waste is obviously a cost for retail outlets, which seek to make the journey from producer to consumer more efficient. There are various ways to avoid it, including cooking fresh items for the deli counter, halving prices or discounting products nearing their expiry date, using apps such as Too Good To Go, or donating to local organisations. Then, of course, there are what are known as "breakages" — items (generally long-life products) that are damaged during transport or storage and can sometimes be salvaged, though this doesn't always happen.
"Not all points of sale can afford to donate, because it costs more than producing waste. If you throw something away, you just need to pay the Tari and label the unsold goods as waste; if you donate, on the other hand, you have to store the goods, call an organisation to collect them, fill in — often by hand — the donation dockets, pay additional human resources, and keep track of everything. A standard procedure, the same for all the organisations you work with, would be needed to speed up the logistical process of donating," says Veronica. Consorzio Conad is made up of five regional cooperatives (including Conad Centro Nord), each with its own practices, which differ further depending on the individual points of sale scattered across Italy. In addition, the reduction of the Tari in the event of a donation, encouraged by the Legge Gadda, varies according to the municipality, which complicates the process even further and, ça va sans dire, the bureaucracy. Despite this, Conad has launched a great many initiatives over the years, including "Dono la spesa", which collected 167 tonnes of products across fifteen provinces, and the collaboration with Emporio market solidale in Parma, a fully fledged supermarket where you don't pay with money but with pre-loaded points cards, based on the number of people in the h