Rural development plays a central role in food wastage reduction in developing countries

According to FAO, roughly one-third of food produced for human consumption is lost throughout the Food Supply Chain (FSP). This Food Wastage (FWa) could be divided in Food Loss (FL – decrease in mass or in nutritional value of food for human consumption), meanwhile Food Waste (FW – food discarded because left to spoil or expired). FAO suggest to start analysis of FWa from harvesting, but several authors suggest to start from sowing because FWa can also occur between sowing and harvesting. For this reason, to limit FWa it is important to adopt the better agricultural practices (seed quality, appropriate organic and synthetic fertilizers, type of rotation, multiple cropping, pruning, and pesticide control). Each item of FWa – according to FAO including only edible part losses – could be further divided in unavoidable, not economically avoidable and economically avoidable. Besides the efforts to reduce last one, it is also important trying to recycle unavoidable and not economically avoidable losses (i.e. as animal feeds or composting). In all these aspects there are great differences between Developed Countries and Developing Countries, mainly justified by available structures and infrastructures. Therefore we have carried out some experiences on FWa reduction in Dem. Rep. of Congo and India. Within established women groups, the following activities have been made: i) planting improved seeds of rice in India has almost doubled the grain yield without any other change; ii) constructing warehouse in common to contain hand-crafted silos for cereals, in order to avoid insect attack, resulted feasible and very effective; iii) drying or frying with palm oil fresh vegetables allows prolonged storage. To conclude, acting to reduce production of FWa to obtain maximum potential yield, as well as reducing the post-harvest losses, recycling FWa as animal feed, composting and anaerobic digestion, limits the need for food production rise. However, uncertainties remains about the actual extent of FWa; difficult is therefore the estimating the amount of its reduction.