Food System Material Flow Analysis model

The EU is committed to meeting the Sustainable Development Goal Target 12.3 to halve per capita food waste at the retail and consumer level by 2030, and reduce food losses along the food production and supply chains. To achieve this goal, the European Commission carried out several actions including the elaboration of a common EU methodology to measure food waste consistently and proposed, as part of the revision of the Waste Framework Directive, to set legally binding food waste reduction targets to be achieved by Member States by 2030.

To support Member States in the monitoring and reporting of food waste quantities to the Commission, and to benchmark the quantities reported, by evaluating data quality and identifying potential errors, the JRC developed a model for the estimation of food waste at Member State level, based on statistical and literature data, adopting a consistent approach across countries, and enabling the assessment of temporal trends.

The model estimates yearly generation of food waste, food losses, and by-products from food production and processing in the EU. These quantities are estimated for each year and Member State, distinguishing between food groups and stages of the supply chain (i.e. primary production, processing and manufacturing, retail and distribution, households, and food services). While food waste is quantified at all stages of the supply chain, food losses are quantified at primary production (i.e. pre-harvesting stage), and by-products (used for animal feed and non-food uses) are quantified at primary production and processing and manufacturing stages. The model was built by developing yearly material flows analyses (MFA) of the food system in each Member State.

The resulting estimates offer a high degree of granularity, enabling the model to be used for scenario analyses, such as evaluating the impact of dietary changes on food waste generation. In addition to its use for benchmarking purposes, the model has been used to support the impact assessment of the legislative proposal on the revision of the Waste Framework Directive. By complementing Member States’ reported data on food waste generation, the model allowed for the disaggregation of estimates at the food group level. This, in turn, facilitated a more precise analysis of the environmental impacts associated with food waste and the potential environmental benefits of achieving the proposed targets (Sala et al., 2023, De Jong et al., 2023).

In addition, this model may serve policy makers for three main aspects that can support the analysis of both existing and future policies:

• Monitoring of policies along time
• Identification of hotspots at different levels (e.g. products and supply chain stages responsible for larger generation of food waste)
• Analysis of policy and green transition scenarios (e.g. assessing the potential for increasing the circularity of the EU food system or the effects of promoting a societal shift to reduce consumer food waste).

The primary goal of the food system material flow analysis model is the quantification of food waste at each stage of the food supply chain (FSC) – primary production, processing and manufacturing, retail and distribution, food services, and household consumption. It also estimates food losses generated at primary production, and by-products generated at primary production and processing, distinguishing between those used as animal feed and for non-food uses (e.g. biomaterials). The model consists of several material flow analyses of the food system in each MS and for each year between 2003 and 2021. In each MFA, the entire food system is mapped, from the harvesting of crops to the consumption of food, and the flows leaving the system are quantified and differentiated between food losses, food waste, and by-products. 11 food groups are considered in the model: sugar, cereals, fruit and nuts, vegetables, potatoes, oilseeds, meat, fish, eggs, dairy, and cocoa and coffee. Estimates are provided at supply chain stage and food group level, for all 27 MSs and all years considered in the analysis.

The model uses as input annual data on agricultural production, trade of agricultural commodities, production and trade of manufactured food products. These are combined with a series of coefficients, partly collected from scientific and technical literature and partly directly calculated from primary data provided by trade associations, to estimate the food waste, losses and by-products generated across the supply chain. Whenever country-specific food waste and food losses coefficients are not available, coefficients taken from other countries are used as proxies.

Sales data at national level are used to complement missing statistical data, for instance to differentiate the amounts of fruit and vegetables distributed for fresh consumption from those entering the manufacturing stage, or to distinguish between the amount of a given product consumed by households from the quantities consumed in food service establishments.

An additional output of the model are the quantities of each food product consumed by an average citizen in each country. These are compared with the amounts reported in the EFSA food consumption database (EFSA, 2015) and obtained through consumption surveys to validate the results of the model.

It should be stressed that, as the food waste coefficients used by the model are fixed in time (due to a general lack of data providing temporal variations in patterns of food waste generation), the temporal variations in the food waste estimates yielded by the model result only from variations in volumes of produced and traded quantities of food, and do not capture actual changes in food waste generation patterns due to changes of consumers’ behaviour and of food business operators’ practices.

The first version of the model was published in De Laurentiis et al. (2021). Here the overall structure of the model and methodology are presented, together with the results obtained with version 1 of the model. Then, the model was further developed in two subsequent versions: De Laurentiis et al., (2023) presents the refinements introduced with version 2 of the model and the related results, and De Laurentiis et al., (2024) presents the refinements introduced with version 3 of the model and the related results. The last is therefore the version to consult to see the most updated results.

The food system MFA model is based on the combination of:

• Data on production, trade, and non-food uses of crops and livestock products
• Data on production and trade of manufactured food products
• Food waste coefficients and other technical coefficients (e.g. production efficiencies) taken from scientific and technical literature
• Primary data collected from trade associations
• Market sales data
• Data from food consumption surveys