The scale of food waste in primary production is not well understood, but could be in the region of 2.5 million tonnes a year in the UK alone, worth c.£800 million. Developing a robust evidence base to quantify and identify the causes of this waste is a priority for delivering the farm-to-fork ambition of Courtauld 2025, whilst making an important contribution to the productivity of UK farming.
Guided by a steering group including the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, the British Retail Consortium, the British Growers Association and the National Farmers Union, WRAP has developed a collaborative ‘data sharing’ approach to building the evidence base. The approach builds on a modelling approach delivered with Agrimetrics, the UK’s agri-food data centre of excellence. It provides a cost-effective solution to delivering a baseline with the potential to provide on-going monitoring into the future.