Review on drivers, trends and emerging issues of the food wastage in China

Abstract

China has successfully achieved food self-sufficiency over the past 50 years, however, with large inputs and losses. To meet the challenge of feeding a growing population with limited resources, many studies have explored options for improving productivity and efficiency of the food production. However, there have been few studies into the potential of reducing food loss along the whole food production-consumption chain. Here we review the literature on food waste in China. We briefly analyze (1) the drivers that influence levels of food waste in the food chain, (2) examine trends in the volumes and types of food wasted at different stages in the food chain, (3) assess the environmental and resource consequences of food waste in the food chain, and (4) evaluate the policy and stakeholder responses to the emerging challenges. It is concluded that reducing food loss and meeting food security in China requires a coherent institutional structure that promotes the synergistic outcomes of research, policy and education. Suggested key actions include (1) improving machinery and facility for sowing, harvesting, transportation and storage, which can reduce food loss by up to 50%, and (2) improving food waste recycling management, based on coupled food production and consumption systems.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

food security / food chain / food wastes and losses / environmental impacts

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Acknowledgements

Financial support for this work was provided by the Hundred Talent Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Food Climate Research Network. We thank Dr. Andreas Wilkes, Dr. Liwei Gao, and Prof. Wenqi Ma for their valuable comments.

Supplementary materials

The online version of this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.15302/J-FASE-2015066 contains supplementary materials (Appendix A and B).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Lin Ma, Wei Qin, Tara Garnett, and Fusuo Zhang declare that they have no conflict of interest or financial conflicts to disclose.

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg