EIP-AGRI Focus Group Reducing food loss on the farm: Final report

This report presents the results of the EIP-AGRI Focus Group “Reducing food loss at farm level”, which has identified the principal on-farm practices and technologies that can minimise such losses. Addressing these losses is a major societal challenge and forms a key pillar of the UN’s Strategic Development Goals (SDGs). While in Western societies, most of the documented food losses/wastes occur post-farm gate, relatively little attention has been paid to on-farm (pre-farm gate) losses. These can be far in excess of 10% of total production and arise for a range of reasons such as inefficient farming operations, difficulties with fulfilling production contracts and lack of awareness and consequently inadequate reporting (categorising) of such losses. The new ‘digital agriculture’ age has already started and offers new opportunities to quantify the extent of losses, enhance on-farm operational efficiency, and provide detailed monitoring of operations and compliance.