1,720,980 research outputs found
Background paper on the economics of food loss and waste
No full textEstimates by FAO (2011a) that the world loses or wastes nearly a third of the food produced for human consumption has sent shock waves across the globe and led to calls for action by world leaders and civil society groups. What exacerbates the concern is that the food loss and waste is occurring at a time of increasing food prices and worsening food insecurity for many.
The issue is of high importance for FAO in its efforts to combat hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition, at the same time enabling inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems.
Food losses and waste have a negative impact on the environment since they represent a waste of production factors and energy resources, and contribute to greenhouse gasses emissions. Consequently, the issue relates to the third goal of FAO to promote the sustainable management and utilization of natural resources, for the benefit of present and future generations.
It is against this background that FAO launched the Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction (also called SAVE FOOD) in 2011 jointly with the private sector trade fair organizer Messe Düsseldorf GmbH1. The initiative comprises four dynamically inter-related pillar of undertaking research and assessments, supporting evidence based policies, strategies and programmes; awareness raising; and the supporting pillar of coordination and collaboration of worldwide initiatives and partnership.
Under the initiative, there have been attempts to define and delineate between food losses and waste. Food loss refers to the decrease in edible food mass available for human consumption throughout the different segments of the supply chain. In addition to quantitative loss, food products can also face a deterioration of quality, leading to a loss of economic and nutritional value. Food waste refers to food losses resulting from decisions to discard food that still has value. Food waste is most often associated with the behaviour of the retailers of the food service sector and of the consumers, but food waste and losses take place all along food supply chains (FAO, 2012).
Food loss is mainly caused by inefficiencies in the use and allocation of resources along the food supply chain, like poor infrastructure and logistics, lack of technology, insufficient skills, and knowledge and management capacity of supply chain actors, as well as poor access to markets. In addition, natural disasters, weather and climatic conditions, negative economic trends might play a role too.
Food waste relates mainly to the behaviour of retailers and consumers and it is a major problem at the global level, since throwing away food is often cheaper than using or re- sing, and in many situations - mainly, but not only, in industrialized nations - consumers can afford to waste food. Food waste is a major concern as more and more countries become urbanized. The world population is expected to increase by 2.3 billion by 2050, passing from 7.0 billion to 9.3 billion (United Nations, 2011). The 2011 Revision of the World Urbanization prospects acknowledged that half of the population of Asia is expected to live in urban areas by 2020, while Africa is likely to reach a 50 percent urbanization rate in 2035. Population growth is becoming largely an urban phenomenon concentrated in the developing world (David Satterthwaite, 2007). Urbanization is expected to keep on rising in both the more developed and the less developed regions so that, by 2050, urban dwellers will likely account for 86 percent of the population in the more developed regions and for 64 percent in the less developed ones. Overall, the world population is expected to be 67 percent urban in 2050 (United Nations, 2012) putting more pressure on dwindling resources to feed the growing population.
A fundamental question on food loss and waste is on economic and market conditions that explain them. Essentially, why these losses and waste occur given the rational behaviour expected of farmers, firms, consumers, and other stakeholders along agri-food supply chains. Moreover, we live in a world of scarce resources. This background paper is an attempt to shed light on this question
Food waste in school catering: An Italian case study
Full text linkFood losses and waste are currently at the heart of academic debates, civil society initiatives, and political agendas. This paper investigates food waste in school catering services focusing on six schools located in the municipality of Verona (Italy). It aims to quantify food waste, as measure of food catering inefficiency, to identify the main causes and to suggest a set of prevention and reduction interventions. For these purposes food waste is intended as all the products discarded from the food chain while still preserving their nutritional value and complying with safety standards. The work shows a significant level of inefficiency in the school catering services, measured as the amount of food processed and still perfectly edible, but not served during the meals. On average more than 15% of the overall processed food is wasted. Among the causes identified in this study, four of them resulted more relevant than others because of their implications and impact on prevention: the lack of attention to dietary habits, the rigid food procurement specifications, the menu composition, and the meal presentation
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Review of EU legislation and policies with implications on food waste
No full textThis report is a deliverable of the FP7 Project "FUSIONS" (Food Use for Social Innovation by Optimising Waste Prevention Strategies). The report aims to inventory and analyze legislation and policies impacting food waste generation at the European level by drawing on existing literature and publicly available information
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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