A Systematic Literature Review on strategies to reduce the Food Loss and Waste

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that one-third of edible food, equivalent to 1.3 billion tons per year, is lost or wasted. The reduction of food losses and waste (FLW) presents opportunities under economic (e.g., wasting money), environmental (e.g., greenhouse gas (GHG) generation), and social (e.g., food security) perspective. There are appropriate responses to manage, according to a circular economy approach, the surplus food: prevention (i.e., reducing at the source; optimizing processes; adapting production to needs), recovery (i.e., redistributing food to people who need and/or want it), and finally recycling (i.e., feeding animals; using scraps for industrial production, energy, or compost). In the scientific literature, there are several proposals for reusing or valorizing agri-food industrial waste. This paper aims to compile and assess the existing sustainable strategies in the agri-food management adopted to minimize the FLW. For this scope, the scientific studies in this research area have been collected. The effects pursued from the various solutions have been evaluated, considering the long-term environmental and social impacts. Consistently to the research aim, a systematic literature review by implementing a manual search of the manuscript published in the last ten years has been conducted. The results provide a clear picture of the existing sustainable strategies in agri-food management to identify the benefits, limitations, and research gap of the current scientific research.