Food loss and waste in South Africa: a focus on poultry and vegetables

This research is a contribution to understand FLW in South Africa as a basis for providing policy recommendations on how to tackle the problem. It is important, however, to acknowledge that there was limited participation from respondents from the large-scale commercial farming sector during the collection of qualitative data, constraining the study’s ability to get insights into FLW from all key informants. In addition, some groups of key informants had dominant voices in certain themes or topics discussed during the interviews, for example academics knew the theoretical underpinnings and definitional aspects of FLW, while other groups such as state officials and private sector representatives had higher numbers compared to the rest of the categories of key informants. However, neither dominant voices nor the numbers in a specific grouping influenced the insights that emerged from this study because key informants were not knowledgeable in all areas/questions/themes discussed. This study confirmed that key informants acknowledge the presence of FLW within South Africa’s food systems. It also identified the root of the issue as primarily occurring along FVCs, particularly on the supply side. Notably, key informants stressed the difficulty in accurately measuring FLW in South Africa, with one academic stating plainly, “we don’t know” how much food is being wasted. This raises a critical question: How can we gather concrete evidence on the supply side to move beyond anecdotal accounts and inform effective solutions?