Scale and Environmental Impacts of Food Loss and Waste in China—A Material Flow Analysis

Li Jia, Jing Zhang and Guanghua Qiao ()
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Li Jia: College of Economics and Management, Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, Hohhot 010010, China
Jing Zhang: School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia
Guanghua Qiao: College of Economics and Management, Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, Hohhot 010010, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 20, issue 1, 1-21

Abstract: Evidence of China’s food loss and waste (FLW) and its increasing impacts on food security and environmental sustainability is urgently needed to guide policy intervention and avoid unnecessary damage to human health and the environment. This paper estimates the scale of China’s FLW in 2019 and assesses the environmental impacts of major food types along the entire food supply chain (FSC) by using a food balance and material flow analysis (MFA) based on existing empirical research. The results show a total FLW of 422.56 Mt which is around 22.37% of total food production (1889.12 Mt). There are also serious environmental impacts on the land footprint (LF), water footprint (WF), and the carbon footprint (CF) estimation (4152.36 × 10 9 gm 2 , 613.84 × 10 6 t CO 2 e and 506.07 × 10 9 m 3 on average, respectively), most of which are found in foods of animal products, cereals, vegetables and fruit at the stages of consumption, agricultural production, postharvest handling and storage. In addition, the root causes of FLW generation at different levels—micro, meso and macro—were also analyzed. These results will provide significant guidance to researchers and decision-makers on primary data collection and reduction-policy development for China’s FLW.

Keywords: food loss and waste; material flow analysis; environmental impacts; food balance; food security (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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