Attending the “Beyond Waste: Optimizing Food, Water, and Energy for Better Nutrition in South Asia” policy dialogue (June 18-19, 2025, in Colombo, hosted by the Government of Sri Lanka and the World Bank Group) was both inspiring and timely. I’m grateful to the organizers for convening a diverse group of policymakers, researchers, donors, and private innovators. It was an honor to be invited to speak as a panelist in the session on “Sustaining Resources: Innovating for New Markets”, alongside esteemed high level policymakers. As someone working at the intersection of agriculture, nutrition, and markets, I found the conversations energizing. The focus was not simply on cutting losses and waste, but on rethinking value, redefining stakeholder roles, and putting nutrition at the heart of transforming our food systems.

Global Context and Stocktaking: Why Food Loss and Waste Matter

The findings shared a stark paradox: the world is wasting food while failing to adequately nourish people. This underscores why food loss and waste (FLW) must be a top priority for governments, businesses, and communities alike.

Today, nearly 868 million people go hungry, while 2.3 billion face food insecurity, many unsure of when or what their next meal will be. At the same time, 2.5 billion people are overweight or obese, exposing a food system that fails to nourish and contributes to poor health outcomes. Nearly one-third of all food produced is lost or wasted each year. In other words, food that could feed the hungry is instead squandered, wasting land, water, and energy. This inefficiency is not sustainable: with half of the world’s vegetated land used for agriculture and billions more mouths to feed by 2050, we can’t simply “PRODUCE MORE”! 

In South Asia (and Nepal specifically), the stakes are even higher. According to estimates from the World Bank, South Asia loses over 30% of its food each year, enough to feed nearly 300 million. In Nepal alone, an estimated 43% of food is lost or wasted, one of the highest rates in the region. These losses carry huge but under-recognized costs for the economy (in the case of the Nepalese economy, nearly 9% of GDP) and for food and nutrition security. 

The takeaway is clear: reducing FLW isn’t just about saving food— it’s about improving health, conserving natural resources, and mitigating climate change.

Reframing Loss and Waste as Untapped Value

One major insight from the dialogue was that wasted food represents untapped value, not just loss. Discarded or unused food still often holds economic, nutritional, environmental, and social worth, if only we can recover it. Addressing FLW requires a system-wide approach where we must look at every step Published Date: July 2, 2025 from farm to fork. Unfortunately, food system actors along the supply chain often lack meaningful incentives to reduce losses, as the cost of waste is typically passed onto consumers. This makes FLW a ‘sticky’ problem that’s easy to ignore.

The dialogue challenged this conventional thinking by reframing waste as a lost opportunity. As one World Bank analysis put it, “Addressing food loss is not just about preventing waste. It is often restoring value to what we produce, ensuring dignity for farmers, better nutrition for families, and greater resilience…”. This resonates deeply with my work at Mandala Agrifresh in Nepal. For example, we help rural smallholder farmers gain access to markets and turn surplus or cosmetically imperfect fruits into nutritious products for schools and households. That circular business model approach, where we recover value from what would have been wasted, reflects a mainstream shift across food systems. It not only helps reduce environmental impact but also provides immediate incentives for businesses to participate in solutions. In a world where food and nutrition security and climate action are urgent, these circular models offer a practical entry point—helping us do more with what we already have.

Circular Food Systems Need More Than Innovation

At Mandala Agrifresh, we’ve seen first hand how circular models (like upcycling ‘ugly’ fruits) can cut FLW and create value for communities. However, scaling such models to improve nutrition is much harder. Our experience points to several persistent barriers (link to our policy and research documents):

• Data Needs: We lack reliable data generated using rigorous methodology on exactly where and why food is lost in the supply chain. Without this data, we are flying blind. We struggle to design targeted solutions or even grasp the full scope of the problem.

• Policy Environment Tailored Towards Production: Another barrier is the policy environment. Government support in countries like Nepal tends to focus on boosting production, while little investment is made in post-harvest (and post-farm-gate) systems. As a result, businesses (like us) that tackle loss face regulatory hurdles and a lack of infrastructure, even when we’re solving real problems in the supply chains. We’ve seen first hand how regulatory misalignment, weak market incentives, and fragmented data systems can hinder the testing, adoption, and scaling of promising innovations.

• Nutrition on the Side lines: The food system generally isn’t designed to reward nutritional value. Food safety and quality standards are inconsistent, and upcycled or processed products often face a trust deficit, struggling for market acceptance. There’s little recognition or premium for nutrient rich, upcycled foods, despite their potential to deliver affordable, nutrient-rich, shelf-stable solutions. 

So, while circular models are essential, they’re not sufficient. If we want to build food systems that truly nourish, especially through upcycling and value recovery, we need more than innovation. We need the right data, the right policies, and an enabling environment that puts nutrition at the centre.

Nutrition: Not an Outcome, But a Compass 

A powerful message from the dialogue was that nutrition must be our compass, not a byproduct of FLW efforts. In Nepal, this challenge is all too visible. We have simultaneously high levels of food loss and persistent undernutrition among young children. Many school-aged children face a triple burden of malnutrition, marked by insufficient calories, inadequate micronutrients, and overconsumption of low quality calories (a consequence of rising exposure to ultra-processed foods in the market). Cutting loss and waste is essential, but it must go hand-in-hand with ensuring safety, equity, and diversity so that the food available and accessible is of optimum nutrient quality for consumption.

From the private sector perspective, there is a need for a shared understanding and a clearer, nutrition focused theory of change in FLW initiatives. We should measure success not only by tons of food saved but also by nutrients delivered to the table. For private sector actors like us (Mandala Agrifresh), it’s essential that government and donor partners align with this view: nutrition must be the primary destination of our efforts, not an afterthought.

The Role of the Private Sector

Perhaps most encouraging was the recognition that the private sector has a critical role to play in bridging the gap between regulation and implementation if the enabling environment is ideal. At Mandala Agrifresh, we work with farmers, women entrepreneurs, and cooperatives to prototype new solutions and mobilize actors across the value chain. We can absorb risk and innovate faster than public systems. 

Yet, without clear incentives, supportive policies, or public investment, even the most promising solutions struggle to scale. That’s why we need commitment from governments and donors to overcome policy barriers, co-invest in infrastructure, and fund evidence generation. With the right support, private enterprises can evolve from isolated pilots to systemic changemakers, deeply integrating objectives into their business models.

From Dialogue to Delivery: Bundled Solutions, Not Silos

Leaving the event, I’m more convinced than ever that the future lies in bundles, context-specific solutions, not one-size-fits-all fixes. We need to combine climate-smart postharvest solutions, improved market access, incentive structures, food upcycling and redistribution networks, locally driven FLW data systems, and co-designed, scalable innovations that address both supply and demand. The pieces are already on the table. The challenge now is to align them across sectors and commit to shared goals. 

On behalf of the Mandala Agrifresh team, we thank the organizers for creating a space where private sector voices could help co-create a shared vision. Moving beyond FLW, and toward sustainable and resilient food systems for nutrition will require all of us, public and private, to act together, with nutrition as our guiding North star.