Conference Agenda

The growing unpredictability of climate change in recent years has increased the vulnerability of agri-food systems to meet the household food demand. In addition, the inefficiencies in agri-food supply chains, combined with household food waste, further aggravate the food, economic and resource use losses. Given that India boasts the largest global population and continually rising living standards, this situation is quite alarming. This study intends to comprehensively analyse the economic, environmental and resource use impacts across three stages of the food cycle: i) The climate change on agricultural yield at the pre-harvest stage using Panel Corrected Standard Errors Model; ii) The Post-Harvest Losses due to inefficiencies in the agri-food supply chain and iii) Household food waste and circular economy potential using various waste treatment methods by 2030 using the Environmentally Extended Waste Input Output model. Results indicate that the increase in maximum temperature levels leads to a reduction in agricultural yield by 2.52%, with rice and cereals being affected the most. The Post-harvest losses and Household food waste combined account for 77%, 76% and 78% of Water, Electricity and Land footprint losses. Efficiency interventions will not only reduce the resource burden but also include the potential to serve as many as 242 million people through food rescue operations. On the other hand, the treatment of residual food waste has the potential to generate 50 Gwh electricity, 25,400 tonnes of Biogas and 16.5 million tonnes of organic compost. This research advocates for

technological interventions at the pre-harvest stage to improve the resilience of crops to climate change variations, accelerate the improvements in Post-Harvest management practices and avoidable household Food Waste to meet the SDG 2 and 12 targets.