A conceptual framework for a national strategy on food loss and waste in Mexico

Food loss and waste in Mexico

Building on work previous delivered by the World Bank on the state of food loss and waste in Mexico, and specifically, a key report looking at the loss and waste of 79 key products, the government of Mexico formally requested the World Bank to develop a National Strategy for food loss and waste (FLW).  Given the forthcoming national elections, the World Bank elected to develop a conceptual framework for a national strategy, thereby allowing a the new administration to adopt it.

The World Bank commissioned WRAP as one of the world’s leading organisations on FLW, to support the development of the conceptual framework.

The framework identifies the ‘hotspots’ where losses and waste occur along the food supply chain and provides an initial list of solutions for the short-, medium- and long-term that could help prevent and reduce FLW. The framework builds on:

1. the current understanding of the challenges associated with FLW in Mexico;
2. the main sources of FLW (the ‘hotspots’) and their underlying causes; and
3. identifying and mapping potential solutions as a roadmap of actions that can be implemented in the short-, medium- and long-term.

WRAP and the World Bank developed the framework through broad consultation across a wide range of stakeholders from public and private sector, international organisations and trade associations, looking at all the available data on food in Mexico to develop the country’s first national estimate.

The scale of the challenge  is large, with at least 20 million tons of FLW annually from farm gate to retail (from the study of just 79 products) and an estimated further 11 million tons of FLW from households and small businesses.  However, there are many actions that can be undertaken to solve this challenge, including further developing the national data and implementing a voluntary agreement between government and businesses.