5 more things I learned from doing the lit review

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  1. Some of the papers that I analysed as part of the literature review!

    Some of the papers that I analysed as part of the literature review!

    The impacts of food losses are wide ranging and profound. Impacts range from compromising food security to wasting valuable inputs and damaging the environment. Much water, land and fertilisers are needlessly wasted to produce food that nobody will ever eat, all while approximately one billion people experience food insecurity. Surely reducing food losses should be seen as low hanging fruit due to the plethora of potential benefits?

  2. Producing food loss and waste contribute significantly to climate change. Using FAO’s calculations, FLW contributes a whooping 4.4 Gt CO2 eq per annum. If this were represented as a country, the emissions would only be inferior to those of China and the US! Incredible!
  3. A wide range of solutions exist. The problem can be solved! A variety of post-harvest technologies exist that can help alleviate the problem. These range from storage solutions to refrigeration and drying. Furthermore, measures like improving infrastructures and increasing access to markets also constitute helpful measures, although these require a lot of investment!
  4. A food chain approach is necessary. Applying a technology or a measure to one stage of the supply chain will not solve the problem. For instance, introducing solar dryers that will decrease post-harvest grain losses will only be beneficial if an adequate market exists to sell the produce. If a market does not exist then the grain will spoil, thus the loss has merely been moved up the value chain, not eradicated!
  5. The INDC process is rather complex. Analysing the INDCs was a rather difficult task. This was not helped by the fact that the documents come in all sorts of lengths and formats and all have varying levels of detail! If only the UNFCCC had provided more concrete guidelines…