Food Loss in History. Insights into the food produced but never consumed

Project Information

FoodLoss

Grant agreement ID: 797802

DOI

10.3030/797802

Project closed

EC signature date 1 March 2018

Start date 1 January 2019

End date 4 July 2021

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 180 277,20

EU contribution

€ 180 277,20

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA' DEGLI STUDI DI MILANO-BICOCCA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FoodLoss (Food Loss in History. Insights into the food produced but never consumed)

Reporting period: 2019-01-01 to 2020-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

What is the problem/issue being addressed?

This research project challenges the popular misconception that food waste is an exclusive peculiarity of the current scenario. Even more so than this, it challenges the commonplace that responsibility for wastage lies with individual consumers’ agency. In so doing it explores reasons, magnitude, and features of food wastage in the past, namely focusing on the cereal food chain.
In order to explore systemic and impersonal meanings of food wastage, the research elects loss, rather than waste, as its real target. Essentially food loss remains distinct from ‘food waste’ since the former takes place at production, post-harvest, and processing stages, whilst the latter only occurs at the very end of the food chain. This project investigates the incidence of grain losses as a whole, its core features, and its main consequences against the backdrop of pre-industrial Europe. The research project is focused on northern Italy, although, whenever allowed, other areas from the European scenario have been included for comparison.

Why is it important for society?
The pre-industrial grain supply chain model provides a number of interesting hints to the current public debate:
- in broad terms the prevailing debate on food wastage is very much focused on quantitative aspects with prominent stress on consumers’ behavior. Among its implicit assumptions we can spot a few popular misconceptions which are openly challenged by this kind of investigation. Firstly the view that food wastage has mainly to do with the consumers’ attitude towards food and – closely related to this former perspective and allegedly due to that – the idea that food wastage is a typical contemporary phenomenon.
- Historical research can prove that human societies have always spoiled a certain percentage of the food they have been able to produce, gained both by agriculture or breeding, as well collected in the wild.

The overall objectives are:

- A couple of goals interact with the state-of-the-art of the discipline (i.e. Social and Economic History), and notably with the debate on food security, food access, and food market.
1) Supplementing the historical analysis of food insecurity displacing the typical view from agricultural output towards the dysfunctional/vulnerable steps throughout the whole supply chain
2) Getting a closer view at the widely overlooked issue of food quality in a given historical setting (here notably cereal quality): considering commodity features and differences, as well as the straight-away impact of quality on stock prices and more broadly on the market

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The action took place as a two-year-long mutual commitment (between researcher and Beneficiary) focusing on the research project FoodLoss and, in broader professional terms, settling a two-way knowledge exchange between the researcher, Laura Prosperi, the main action coordinator, Luca Mocarelli, the Department DEMS and the University of Milan Bicocca, the main beneficiary of the action.
Although a number of deliverables are still to be finalized in 2022-2023 (see attachment B) because of the pandemic restrictions and a prominent engagement by the researcher in the development of a new study curriculum, the research main outputs and insights inspired a new research project on wastage coping strategies and recycling food practices in food emergency historical settings. The new research project, titled “ Making Food up: Wastage vs Safety. Solutions to Food Emergency from the Past” was presented in 2021 by the coordinator Luca Mocarelli who applied for funding within a competitive internal call for research projects. The project was selected and funded by a tenure-track research position. In July 2021 the researcher Laura Prosperi won the public selection for this tenure-track position and on the 1st October 2021 she kicked off her new role. Since then the researcher has been committed to the new research project and her position will last until October 2024.
Data collection, writing, and dissemination activities have covered a number of facets dealing with cereal storing, such as scientific and technological breakthroughs or institutional policies; a wider investigation into cereal qualitative range, yields in flour, economic impact, and price dynamics has been carried out. A number of themes have been discussed within the research group and, whenever allowed, in national as well international symposia. Main points have been presented also in events for the public outreach such as the Researchers' Night, boot camps as well as student events.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Points emerged in the research, which can contribute to the current public debate and correct the mainstream approach to the issue of food wastage :

1) Reviewing the causes, responsibilities, and actors in food wastage grasp thanks to a broader consideration of market dynamics (i.e. profitable wastage due to speculative attitude) jointly to eco-systemic factors.
2) The pre-industrial setting allows us to question the current interpretation of food wastage, shaped by a different interplay between economic rationale, natural dynamics, and moral priorities. In historical settings among large warehouses, a percentage of stored grain used to get stolen or go rotten as well as get spoiled in processing. The coping strategies in place, both upcycling and recycling, were deeply different from our own because of different interferences with relevant categories such as responsibilities and benefits.

3) In a chemical-free world, the whole eco-system balance would rely on resources integration among different species and notably food surpluses would get locally absorbed by other animal species as well as vegetal ones. The breakdown of traditional eco-chain together with urbanization lies at the heart of the problem, but also ethical priorities matter together with the new food safety standards. Singular in-depth analysis of cereal supply chains provide models of circular economy and solutions able to deconstruct the current definition in light of different balances between humans and other living reigns.

4) By carrying out this kind of approach the researcher acquires useful elements to question mainstream as well as institutional definitions of food wastage: blurred borders emerge between ‘losses’ and ‘waste’ since the consumers’ role (in terms of habits, attitude, preferences, lifestyle) tends actually to infiltrate throughout the whole supply chain, both in historical times and nowadays.

5) The historical regard to the wide “food waste” issue is not the only one useful to spot the weaknesses of the seemingly neutral definition adopted by institutional authorities, industry and consumers. Other disciplines, as a whole, can strongly contribute to reshaping the problem, including the definition of edibility and food itself.

PRIVATE COLLECTION MONTE FRUMENTARIO-TERRE DI RESILIENZE. CASELLE IN PITTARI (SA)