Roadmap approach for improving food value chain efficiencies : How to identify and implement interventions for reducing Food Loss and Waste in Dhaka's food system?

Abstract

Improving food value chain efficiencies can support greater availability of and access to safe and nutritious food for all, and help shape more resilient food systems, particularly in Low-and Middle Income Countries (LMICs). Acting effectively on value chain inefficiencies is a complex task and many variables and food system dynamics should be considered relevant for making intervention decisions. Lasting long-term change needs a combination of interlinking, inclusive interventions acting on different components of the food system (e.g. the food value chain itself, as well as the enabling environment), and attention to critical success factors (e.g., affordability and accessibility) to be able to provide the right conditions for success. This document serves to support intervention and implementation decisions towards the goal of reducing food value chain inefficiencies, focusing on the reduction of Food Loss & Waste (FLW) in Bangladesh, specifically in Dhaka Metropolitan Area (DMA).As FLW represents a major food value chain inefficiency, this document specifically aims to answer the question 'How to identify and implement interventions for reducing Food Loss and Waste in Dhaka's food system?', to support greater availability of and access to safe and nutritious food for all. This approach can be used by value chain stakeholders (including policymakers, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and financiers) to develop their own strategies for improving food value chains at the local, regional, or national level, as well as by private sector actors who wish to strategically explore how and where to intervene to reduce FLW. It can also be used by researchers and other knowledge experts to build on and add to for purposes of enhancing knowledge and expertise on the topic of FLW reduction interventions for the specific food value chains that are elaborated, and new food value chains.The framework includes the description of a value chain intervention roadmap. In this report, a roadmap focuses on addressing FLW, but the steps of the presented approach could be relevant for assessing other value chain inefficiencies as well, such as greenhouse gas emissions, food safety hazards, water use or food production issues. The roadmap approach consists of two main components: 1) Selection of FLW reducing interventions and 2) implementation strategy of FLW reducing interventions in the food system. For the first component we use the EFFICIENT protocol developed by Kok et al. (2021a), and for the second component we elaborate on intervention criteria as presented by Soethoudt et al. (2021). This document provides a structured, yet adaptable approach to sketch possible pathways and structure coherent action towards improved food value chains -a roadmap, not a blueprint.The selected products for which FLW will be addressed in more detail are a selection of most frequently consumed items by households in Bangladesh, and continue work on earlier conducted value chain studies.The products are beef, chicken, fish, onion, potato and ric...