Approximately one third of the world's food is lost, and reducing this represents an important strategy for promoting more sustainable food systems and addressing global food insecurity. This paper presents a preliminary assessment of the socio-economic factors that are significant in causing food loss in developing countries. These countries were chosen because the majority of food waste in poorer nations happens on or around the farm and is due to inefficient storage and processing facilities (by contrast, the majority of food waste in the global north is caused by consumers or retailers and, hence, is a very different problem). To explore this topic, we conducted a multivariate panel data analysis where the volume of food loss in 93 countries over 20 years was used as the dependent variable and a range of socio-economic factors were used as independent variables. Results show that, for the countries in the global south, variables related to wealth, agricultural machinery, transportation, and telecommunications were significant in explaining the amount of lost food. We used these results to model the effectiveness of different hypothetical policies designed to reduce food loss and estimate that up to 49% of food loss could be averted by improving each countries' performance on these variables. While these results seem to offer huge opportunities to improve the sustainability of global agricultural systems and address global food security, this paper concludes on a note of caution: as countries grow wealthy enough to address the food lost by challenges associated with on-farm issues, these same countries may start to experience more food waste at the consumer/retailer end of the food chain. Therefore, any attempt to reduce on-farm food loss in lower income countries must be met with policies to reduce the emerging problems of food waste amongst consumers and retailers.
Bangladesh is generally considered to be one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, with flooding, droughts and cyclones being the most common annual disaster events. This article provides an overview of existing social-protection programmes and government policies in the context of longterm adaptation to climate change related to sudden onset disasters, and evaluates their effectiveness in addressing related vulnerabilities and promoting food security in climate-vulnerable regions in the country.
Important environmental and economic changes are transforming livelihoods in coastal communes throughout the Mekong delta. In the process, the historical reliance on rice farming and fishing has become less viable and sustainable, forcing households to construct more complex livelihood strategies. To document these livelihood transformations, we have analyzed primary survey data from 346 households across eight coastal communes in Ca Mau Province, located in the southern tip of Vietnam's Mekong delta. We find that there was a great deal of change in the livelihoods of survey respondents over the decade covered by the survey with over 40 per cent of all households reporting a change in their primary source of income. For the most part, these changing livelihood patterns describe a successful adjustment process whereby many households partly or completely left activities that did not offer high returns for other activities that offer more, or were able to combine livelihood activities to successfully adjust. However, we argue that not all fisheries-based households have the financial or human capital to take advantage of the opportunities arising from Vietnam's seafood boom or economic development more generally. Poverty remains prevalent for those locked into extensive aquaculture and especially farming.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.