Food Loss and Waste country profile Vietnam

In Vietnam, three hotspots stand out as extremely critical: rice, vegetable and pig meat. Freshwater fish and bovine meat follow closely after.

Urgency and call for action on Food Loss and Waste (FLW) reduction

Globally, each year possibly as much as 30% of the food produced is being lost or wasted somewhere between farm and fork. Food Loss and Waste (FLW) accounts for around 8 to 10% of our global Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHGEs). Approximately a 25% of all freshwater used by agriculture is associated to the lost and wasted food. 4.4 million km² of land is used to grow food which is lost or wasted. The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 12.3 calls to ‘halve per capita global Food Waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce Food Losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses’. With only 6 years to go, the world is far from being on track to achieve this target.

Read the full Vietnam FLW country profile

Figure 1: Top 15 hotspot categories of food loss and waste in terms of volumes and FLW-associated GHG emissions (in CO2-eq.)

Figure 2: Top 15 hotspot categories of the land-use footprints of FLW (in ha)

FLW, GHGEs, nutrition, land use and water footprint country profile Vietnam

Based on the country data modelling, estimates on FLW associated GHGEs were retrieved for Vietnam and plotted with the FLW total tonnage to visualize the two components (Figure 1). For FLW, vegetables, rice, fruits, freshwater fish, bananas are the hotspots. For FLW-associated GHGEs, the five FLW hotspot products for Vietnam are: rice, vegetables, and to a lesser extent freshwater fish, pig meat and bovine meat. From the rice chains, 6.4 million tons of FLW represents 12.2 million tons CO2-eq. of GHGEs, the highest of all. The category "vegetable, other" has by far the highest FLW in weight with 8,800,000 tons.

Figure 2 presents the top 15 items with the largest land-use footprints of FLW. Bovine meat, rice, and pig meat rank the top 3. Note that land use footprints do not apply for aquatic products.

With respect to the water footprints of the FLW, rice and pig meat rank the top 2, followed by vegetables, fruits and bovine meat (Figure 3). Here also, the indicator ‘water footprint’ does not apply to aquatic products.

From another perspective, taking the percentages of FLW in relation to production percentages, fruits and vegetables are identified as the main hotspots showing average FLW of 54% along the chains (Figure 4).

Figure 3: Top 15 hotspot categories of the water footprints of FLW (in m3)

Figure 4: Percentages of FLW per product category

Further insights in hotspots are derived from estimated distribution of the FLW along supply chains for the top hotspots in the region (Figure 5). These data suggest that the processing and packing stage of fruits and vegetables as well as the postharvest handling and storage stage of freshwater fish embodies bottlenecks.
These are focus points for more detailed data collection and analysis of causes to address potential interventions.

Smart interventions in such ‘hotspots’ in food supply chains can substantially contribute to GHG emission mitigation of food systems.

Analysis of specificities of such chains (e.g. comparing informal and formal supply chains, and urban and rural settings) including comparison with supply chains for similar product categories may reveal promising interventions. Interventions may combine hardware (packaging, cooling, etc.), orgware (e.g. arrangements in chains) and software (knowledge, information) elements.

Figure 5: Percentages of FLW per stage in the supply chain for top hotspot products Remark: Agricultural production does not include any potential yield gaps and focuses on actual production and harvest losses.

Figure 6: Top 15 hotspot categories of loss of proteins associated with FLW

Figure 7: Average provision of nutrients per capita relative to WHO dietary recommendations

Figure 6 shows the protein losses associated with FLW where rice, vegetables, freshwater fish, pig meat and marine fish are the top five items. Finally, the food supply and FLW data were used to assess nutrient supply per capita in the Vietnamese population in relation to recommended nutrient intake (Figure 7). These are average number, and it is not likely that nutrients are evenly distributed across Vietnam. Hence, there will be parts of the populations that suffer insufficiencies of calcium, vitamin A, and zinc.

From nutrition security perspective, efforts for mitigating FLW in rice and freshwater fish would contribute the most to population nutrient gains (Table 1).

Table 1: Food product categories for which the FLW have highest share for the most critical nutrients.

Overall conclusions and suggestions for the next steps

Figure 8 displays a comprehensive ranking of hotspot food products based on five criteria. While there are nine hotspot food products identified, a closer examination reveals notable variations in the ranking of the nine hotspot products across different categories. Among these products, rice, vegetable, pig meat and freshwater fish emerge as extremely critical food products. Rice and vegetable take the lead as the extremely critical products, ranking high for all five categories, followed by pig meat. Bovine meat follows positioned as a hotspot for three categories and classified as a very critical product. In the next tier of hotspot products, fruits stand out among the top five hotspots for two categories, falling into the category of moderately critical products. Poultry, marine fish, banana hold a rank in only one hotspot category, classifying them as slightly critical food products.

It is important to highlight that for freshwater fish and marine fish the criteria of land-use footprints and water footprints do not apply. Therefore, freshwater fish is ranked under the extremely critical products. An argument could be made for re-evaluating the classification of marine fish as moderately critical rather than slightly critical, given the unique considerations surrounding their land-use and water footprints.

It is suggested to develop FLW reduction actions, with synergy on GHGEs mitigation, nutrition, land-use and water footprints. The above analysis underlines that, if one considers sustainability in the context of these five selected indicators, the greatest impact can be achieved by concentrating efforts on reducing FLW related to rice, vegetables, pig meat, freshwater fish, and bovine meat compared to focusing on other food products.

Since the results are not on product level, it is not immediately clear, where to start your intervention. Our suggestion to develop FLW reduction actions, with synergy on GHGEs mitigation, nutrition, land-use and water footprints,is to implement monitoring or/and gather primary data for hotspot-supply chains of the country. The results in this document guide stakeholders by focusing on the top four food (sub)categories in combination with the indicative results on FLW per supply chain link. To research interventions, it is necessary to go to product level, which can be based on production or trade data in the country. The next step is to identify business cases for FLW reduction. For this purpose, WUR’s EFFICIENT protocol and FLW cause and intervention tool can be used.

Figure 8: Ranking of hotspot product across five criteria