Abstract

One of the key programmatic areas of Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is the measurement of country progress towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The objective of the SDG 12 is to ‘Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns’, with the more specific Target 12.3 which aims, “by 2030, to halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses”. In the Indian context, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), Government of India (GoI) has the responsibility of developing a National Indicator Framework (NIF) for monitoring SDGs at the national level. ICAR-Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute (IASRI) in collaboration with ICAR-CIPHET, has developed a sampling methodology for the estimation of harvest and post-harvest losses of major crops and commodities in India and this methodology was adopted in the previous three national-level surveys conducted during 2005-2007, 2012-2014 and 2020-2022 for estimating percentage loss of 45, 45 and 54 crops and commodities respectively. Therefore, under this study funded by FAO, Rome through FAO-India, Food Loss Index (FLI) for India has been compiled following the methodology developed by the FAO and methodology for year-wise estimation of food loss developed by ICAR-IASRI, based on the data obtained from these three national-level post-harvest losses (PHL) surveys conducted using the methodology developed by ICAR-IASRI in collaboration with ICAR-CIPHET. Some alternative variants of FLI for India under two different categories; (i) Country FLI with 2005 as base year and (ii) FLI for India with 2015 as base year for SDG monitoring and international comparison, have been compiled. Under FLI for India with 2015 as base year for SDG monitoring, the following has been carried out:
i) Calculation of FLI for India for international monitoring of SDG considering 2015 as base year based on loss estimates with harvest loss
ii) Calculation of FLI for India for international monitoring of SDG considering 2015 as base year based on loss estimates without harvest loss
It is inferred from the FLI for India for the 2005-2022 period, with 2005 as a base year, that the Food Loss Index over the eighteen years period decreases, indicating that the country would have met the objectives of the SDG 12.3.1, if the monitoring period would have fallen between 2005-2022. It is also inferred from the FLI for India for the period of 2015-2022, with 2015 as a base year set by the SDG Committee, that the FLI over the eight years period decreases, indicating that the country has met the objectives of the SDG 12.3.1 during the SDG monitoring period 2015-2022.
It is evident from this study that the Food Loss Percentage (FLP) for India has decreased from 3.10% to 2.67% using internationally agreed commodity basket recommended by FAO and from 3.54% to 3.03% using all 45 commodities during 2015-2022 considering 2015 as the base year excluding harvest losses inferring that there is a gain of 0.43% and 0.51% decrease respectively for India over the period of 2015-2022. It has also been observed that the FLI for India excluding harvest losses for the 2015-2022 period has decreased from 100 to 86.35 using internationally agreed commodity basket recommended by FAO and from 100.00 to 85.70 using all 45 commodities during 2015-2022 considering 2015 as the base year and using step-wise year-wise decrement procedure. Similar results across 12 vs 45 commodities confirm that the international indicator is representative of the national indicator based on all 45 commodities. The results support India’s compliance with SDG 12.3.1.
Additionally, some improvements in the FAO methodology for compilation of FLI have been suggested and FLI for India for the intervening periods have been computed incorporating these suggestions. Some suggestions have also been made for improvement in the FAO methodology in future in case of countries who are import-dependent for the crop/commodity. Report on FLI for India for including SDG indicator 12.3.1 in National Indicator Framework (NIF) of India was accepted by FAO, Rome. Consequently, MoSPI, GoI has approved inclusion of FLI in NIF of India. Therefore, SDG 12.3.1a “Food Loss Index” is included in the National Indicator Framework 2025 of India by the Government of India for its global reporting. Hence, India may be treated as a global reference point for FLI computation besides India being pioneer in food loss measurement at global level as India is the only country in the world who has conducted 3 national level surveys on food loss measurement using scientific methodology involving both inquiry and actual measurement based primary data collection.