These include:
- Retailers, and in particular the big supermarkets who dominate food sales in the UK, to act more responsibly in limiting food waste by both farmers and consumers. They should also work harder to avoid cancelling orders of food that has already been grown by producers a practice which leads to unsold, but perfectly edible, food being ploughed back into the fields or left unharvested.
- Encouragement of retailers to use long-term contracts with their suppliers, whole-crop purchasing and improvements in forecasting.
Read the Committee’s full report here
The NFU provided written and verbal evidence as part of this call. Environment policy adviser Anna Simpson and horticulture board member Paul Simmonds talked about how retailer behaviour, including contracts to produce more food than required, leads to more food waste.
Our oral evidence highlighted the importance of tackling the problem across the whole supply chain and the impact that retail decisions and specifications have on the waste created within the agricultural sector.
The Committee also called on the new European Commission, which will be appointed in November this year, to publish a five year strategy for reducing food waste across the EU, and to do so within six months of taking office.
NFU members: read the evidence submitted to the call (login to access)