Apart from attending the important sessions and side events, SIANI also organized a side event in collaboration with the Swedish Ministry of Rural Affairs and Sida. The side event aimed at showcasing the Sweden´s holistic approach to reducing food waste and losses across scales and along the value chain.
Ulrika Franke from the board of Agriculture presented the new government initiative on food waste and losses with a new set of national goals of Sweden´s food waste reduction policies, for example, reducing waste by 20% by 2020, targeting at least 40% of energy from waste recovery.
Ulrika also presented some results from series of recent studies on consumer behavior as well as about liquid waste treatment. Her presentation particularly emphasized presentation the coherence across the operations in three public institutions: the Swedish EPA, the board of Food and the Board of Agriculture.
In line with the government’s aim to reduce waste and losses Katarina Eriksson from Tetralaval presented on how a Swedish multinational company works to reduce losses in the dairy value chain in developing countries. In his presentation Maina Caguru from We effect told about how a Swedish NGO works with farmers organizations in Eastern Africa to reduce the losses in the banana value chain. This work resulted in new products for the market like banana chips and banana flour. However the losses remain huge and in one day four farmers can lose more than 1 tons of bananas.
Comments from the audience suggested that the inclusion of private sector actors like Tetra Laval and also in-depth research on consumer attitudes towards food waste and losses resonated with experience of other people working on this topic. The USAID representative at the CFS: expressed interest in on-going knowledge exchange on food waste reduction between Sweden and the US. The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation invited SIANI to collaborate in the newly launched Save Food Community of Practice on Food Losses Reduction.
Interested to know more? Check out the presentations from the event