The Impact of Economic Drivers on Food Loss Management

Abstract

Food loss, a critical issue in the world, is especially used to describe the lost agricultural production. Primary agricultural production is inherently risky, being exposed to numerous pressures from weather and diseases. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) about 1.3 billion tons of the food obtained for human consumption go uneaten yearly (nearly $2,6 trillion annually as a cost). The benefits of food loss reducing on farms are incontestable. This paper examines the food loss from an economic perspective by summarizing the economic drivers of food loss on the farm-level (costs and availability of workforce, consumers standards and preferences, price volatility, supply chain factors). The reducing of food loss is economically useful not only in terms of intervention costs, but also in terms of alternative means of achieving food security and environmental equilibrium.

Keywords

• agricultural production
• food loss
• price volatility
• consumers’ preferences
• management.