Projects

FOLOU

Bringing knowledge and consensus to prevent and reduce Food Loss at the primary production stage

FOLOU
FOLOU project aims to establish mechanisms for measuring, monitoring, and assessing the magnitude and impact of food loss
  • Grant agreement ID: 101084106

  • Total project budget: 6.523.903€

  • Start Date: 01/01/2023

    End Date: 31/12/2026

  • Project website: www.folou.eu/

Each year, a significant amount of food is lost during primary production. This has negative consequences for society, contributing to food insecurity, harming the environment, creating greenhouse gas emissions, and putting pressure on land and water resources. However, there are several challenges that prevent us from reducing food loss, including regulatory, technical, scientific, and social obstacles.

To overcome these challenges, the FOLOU project aims to establish mechanisms for measuring, monitoring, and assessing the magnitude and impact of food loss. This will involve developing a robust and harmonized methodology for measuring and estimating food loss, creating national and EU food loss registries, and providing tailored training to different stakeholders. The project also aims to ensure that its outcomes are adopted by primary producers, retailers, consumers, policymakers, and researchers.

FOLOU’s comprehensive action plan is organized around four levers of change. The first is understanding the drivers behind food losses and assessing their impact. The second is developing new cost-effective tools for measuring and estimating food loss. The third is providing tailored training to different stakeholders. The fourth is preparing recommendations and creating a twinning program to ensure that FOLOU’s outcomes are adopted by key stakeholders.

FOLOU is a collaborative effort involving 16 multidisciplinary partners from 10 countries. Its main objective is to prevent and reduce the amount of food intended for human consumption that is eventually lost. The project will last for four years.

European Union