Modelling the drivers for sustainable agri-food waste management

Abstract

Purpose The waste of invaluable agri-food produce is the concern of United Nations Organisation and all countries across the world. The purpose of this paper is to identify and model the drivers of agri-food waste management in India. Design/methodology/approach The interpretive structural modelling method is used to model the drivers in this study. This method helps in understanding the driver-dependent relationships among various drivers/criteria which are selected for studying. Findings The findings of the study vividly shows that the drivers such as disaster management planning, information dissemination, and training and awareness programs for farmers are most vital for tackling the issue. Research limitations/implications This work would help the policy makers in developing the effective policies regarding the management of agri-food waste in a sustainable manner. Practical implications This work would be very helpful for deeply understanding the causes of occurring waste and carefully handling it scientifically with a managerial perspective. Hence, it has the potential to reduce the generation of waste and saving the food for society. Social implications With the help of this study, the people, society, and underprivileged will be benefited directly. The savings in agri-food waste will not only help in controlling the prices of it but also its more availability would be beneficial for all in beating the hunger. Originality/value The identification of drivers for the sustainable management of agri-food is the novelty of this research.

Food Loss Drivers in the Upstream Food Supply Chain: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Thus, as many authors have found in their studies having lack of storage infrastructure give rise to FL (Chauhan et al, 2018;Gogo et al, 2018;Canali et al, 2017;Gogo et al, 2017;Willersinn et al, 2015;Beretta et al, 2013).…”

“…Thus far, a few studies have been conducted to determine FL drivers in a different context. Chauhan et al (2018) conducted a study to identify and model the drivers of agri-food waste management in India. Redlingshöfer et al (2017) aimed to measure food loss at the upstream stages of the FSC in industrialized countries.…”

“…Transportation problems, mismanaging the demand, and wrong warehousing applications are the sub-factors of the logistics related FL drivers at the production stage of the FSC. Chauhan et al (2018) mentioned that high transportation costs and weak transportation networks cause FL. If the transportation costs are higher than the sales price of the product, the producer will prefer to leave the product in the field, instead of selling and left food turns into waste.…”

“…Wrong demand forecasting results in either in food shortage or food surplus. In food surplus case, the extra products cannot be produced on time and turns into waste (Campbell and Munden-Dixon, 2018;Chauhan et al, 2018;Beausang et al, 2017;Canali et al, 2017;Gogo et al, 2017;Redlingshöfer et al, 2017;Priefer et al, 2016;Beretta et al, 2013). Producers can make wrong forecasting due to various reasons such as supply agreements with retail chains, government subsidiaries, and lack of information dissemination within the supply chain.…”

“…Failures during the production is another sun-criterion for FL. Especially producing food off the standards is a remarkable failure (Priefer et al, 2016;Redlingshöfer et al, 2017;Chauhan et al, 2018;Canali et al 2017;Beretta et al, 2013).…”