Reducing food losses & food waste (FLW) is a key global challenge to ensure sufficient and healthy food into the future, and to use available arable land as efficiently as possible. And it is an existing challenge for all nations as an unacceptable amount of FLW occurs in all parts of the world – in developing as well as in emerging and highly industrialized countries.

Against this background the 2015 annual Meeting of Agricultural Chief Scientists of G20 states (MACS) emphasized the decisive importance of research to reduce FLW. At their Turkey meeting MACS agreed that a subset of G20 members, led by Germany, would conduct a survey of current research and technology approaches to reducing FLW throughout the whole food value chain in G20 countries and beyond.

The objective of this information platform is to generate a pool of (i) FLW expert profiles and (ii) FLW research activities, results and advanced technologies. Each scientist engaged in FLW research has the chance to entry their own expert profile as well as their corresponding FLW projects. The data, which is a resource for all to use, shall be regularly complemented by entries from scientists and research funding bodies in order to keep the platform up-to-date and to aid international collaboration.