Implementing the circular economy paradigm in the agri-food supply chain: The role of food waste prevention technologies

Abstract Food systems are plagued by the grand sustainability challenge of food waste, which represents a urging issue from economic, environmental and social point of view. dThe Circular Economy paradigm can open up different actions which are framed within the so-called Food Waste Hierarchy (FWH). In these regards, scholars recommend to leverage on those practices that are able to prevent the generation of surplus food, preserving a higher share of the sustainable value. For these pre-harvest and post-harvest practices that go under the name of prevention or reuse strategies in different FWH, technology plays a crucial role. Through a set of 34 semi-structured interviews with technology providers as well as with companies in the agri-food supply chain, the present work investigates extensively the range of the available technologies and the detailed objectives of such technologies for food loss and waste prevention (i.e., forecasting, monitoring, grouping, shelf life extension, product quality and value upgrading). Moreover, different forms of collaboration enable to reach these objectives in different ways. Collaboration with technology providers can be based on continuous technical assistance and consulting for data elaboration and data analysis as well as on full data sharing and co-design, allowing to achieve a different impact on food loss and waste prevention. Finally, our study reveals that the adoption of different technological options can represent the engine to establish vertical collaborations between the adopter of the technology and another stage in the agri-food supply chain, in order to fight food waste and loss with a coordinated supply chain effort.