FOLOU – Bringing knowledge and consensus to prevent and reduce Food Loss at the primary production stage

There are several factors hampering the reduction of food losses. At regulatory level, food losses at primary production stage are currently excluded from the EU Commission Decision (EU) 2019/1597, which sets a common method and minimum quality requirements for the uniform measurement of levels of food waste at the national level. Moreover, at technical and scientific level there is a lack of common measurement methodology to estimate food losses at the primary stage as well as an insufficient knowledge and understanding of the drivers behind. Likewise, key stakeholders involved the value chain also lack of relevant skills to efficiently prevent and adopt solutions.

In lien with the Green Deal and the Farm to Fork strategy, FOLOU is willing to contribute to unlock the systemic transition of EU food systems by setting up the necessary mechanisms to:

• measure and estimate food losses at primary production stage, encompassing agriculture, aquaculture, fisheries;
• monitor and report at Member States and European levels;
• assess the magnitude and impact of Food Losses.

Additionally, FOLOU will also work to assure the appropriate knowledge transfer and adoption of the project outcomes by the key targeted stakeholders: primary producers, retailers, consumers, policy makers and researchers.

FOLOU will structure its activities in a comprehensive action plan revolving around four levers of change:

• Understanding by working on collecting and curing food losses available data, by understanding the drivers behind food losses and by assessing the impact of these losses;
• Measuring by developing new cost-effective tools for the measurement/estimation of food losses and a robust and harmonized methodology for five main commodity groups;
• Training by providing tailored trainings to different stakeholders;
• Adopting by preparing recommendations and creating a twinning programme between frontrunner and followers regions.

Check the temporary project website here 

Project Coordinator

• Fundacio Universitaria Balmes, Spain 

Project Partners

• Alma Mater Studiorum - Universita' di Bologna, Italy
• Fundacio Espigoladors, Spain 
• Universiteit Gent, Belgium 
• Universita' Politecnica delle Marche, Italy
• Norce Norwegian Research Centre AS, Norway
• Departament d'Acció Climàtica, Alimentació i Agenda Rural, Spain
• Agencia de residus de Catalunya, Spain
• Fundacion Circe Centro de investigacion de recoursos y consumos energeticos, Spain
• Dilepix, France
• Proman management GMBH, Germany
• IMPACT, Belgium
• Association of cities and regions for sustainable resource management, Belgium 
• Mediterranean Information Office for Environment, Culture and Sustainable Development Association, Greece
• University of Limerick, Ireland
• University of Reading, United Kingdom