UNDERSTANDING FOOD LOSS AND WASTE IN TANZANIA'S AVOCADO PRODUCTION SYSTEMS: A CASE STUDY OF DOMESTIC AND EXPORT AVOCADO SUPPLY CHAINS

On-farm food losses have been identified as a significant hotspot, and it is estimated that 1.2 billion
tonnes of food production are lost globally on farms per year, representing 15.3% of global food
production (WWF-UK, 2021). Empirical studies to date, on food loss and waste in the global South
and indeed in the global North have primarily focused on ‘how much loss/waste’, often at postharvest
stages of supply chains, to the neglect of on-farm losses. In the global South, food losses
and waste are viewed as inefficiencies in the production and supply chains, and there has been no
attention to understanding how institutions, materiality and practices interact to produce food
waste. This thesis aims to understand how institutions, practices, and materiality intersects to
produce food loss and waste in Tanzania’s domestic and export avocado production systems and
how losses and waste production manifest power relations and inequalities within the two distinct
avocado production systems. This study views food loss and waste as a ‘social relations’ to unpack
the complexities of the socio-cultural, economic, material, and institutional arrangements and the
context of the social relations within which losses and waste occur in agricultural production and
early stages of food supply chains. It draws on the food waste regimes concept to propose a new
conceptual framework whereby insights from institutions, materiality and practices are integrated
to understand how their interactions generate food loss and waste. It puts social relations at the
centre of food loss and waste analysis to argue that rethinking food loss and waste as ‘social
relations’ helps us to understand better how power relations and inequalities operate in the food
production system to generate food loss and waste in the global South context which has not been
attended to in the food waste and loss debate.
The research adopted a qualitative case study methodology using ‘following the thing’ and ‘goalong’
ethnographic observation approaches as the principal tools to collect empirical evidence.
Data was collected from various participants, including farmers, nursery owners, traders,
exporters/packers, stakeholders, and key informants, in two major avocado production regions
(Kilimanjaro and Mbeya). The findings underscore the importance of how different institutions
(norms, value(s), beliefs, code of practice, guidelines, rules, regulations, and standards, among
others), materiality and practices interact to produce loss and waste in the context of the domestic
and export avocado production systems and supply chains. Economic and no-economic value(s),
risk avoidance strategies used by farmers, traders, and exporters /processors, and the social
relations within the institutional arrangements, which structure the production and distribution
practices, were food to result in loss and waste production, on farms and within early stages of the
supply chain. Different values influence how agronomic, harvesting, and handling practices were
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enacted in the two avocado production systems resulting in a different context in which preharvest
loss and waste occur, but also during harvest and early stages of the supply chains. The study argues
that farm-level losses, including preharvest losses, are connected to broader market institutional
structures, socio-cultural values, and norms. Therefore, preharvest losses should be viewed not
only through the prism of economic value; but also, through other values derived from the crop. I
contend that in order to understand loss and waste in food production systems, there is a need to
attend to the role of values and norms held by the farmers, traders and exporters and other actors
with a specific food system.
While risk avoidance strategies used by traders and exporters, such as delaying harvest due to lower
prices, overloading sack bags, and in some cases, side selling by farmers, played significant roles
in the ways losses and waste were produced; the materiality of the avocado – its ‘perishability’ and
‘size’ was found to be a vital object through which control and power were exercised. Often, the
perishability of the avocado (particularly in the case of the domestic supply chain) was drawn upon
by traders to blackmail, sanction, and extract value (profits) from other actors; in this case, the
seller(s) who is always in a vulnerable position. The use of the ‘perishability’ to wield power and
inequalities was found to shift along the supply chain as the avocado is sold/re-sold from one seller
to another. In the case of the export avocado, the size of the avocado linked to the spatial-temporal
location of the farmer (site of production) and cosmetic appearance was found to be the means
through exporters and processors used to exercise power, to extract value and create price
inequalities among growers, often advantaging small growers. Taking a social relations approach
enabled analyse of food loss and waste through the lens of power relations, value extraction and
inequalities, and vulnerabilities among growers. Thus, pushes against the technological,
infrastructural, and managerial inadequacy and practical know-how bias, which dominated food
loss and waste discourse in the global South.
Moreover, a ‘credit system’ and a ’reject sharing system’ as an institutional arrangement in
domestic and export supply chains provided an avenue for exploitation, inequalities, losses, and
waste generation. Again, the responsibility for or sharing the ‘burden of losses’ was found to
significantly influence opportunistic trading practices by traders and farmers, resulting in losses
and waste generation in the domestic supply chain.
These findings, taken together, have implications for how food policy actors, development
practitioners, farmers, and commercial stakeholders approach food loss and waste reduction on
farms and the early stages of the supply chain. It calls for the need to sufficiently engage with the
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systemic causes embedded in institutions that structure how production, management and
distribution practices are enacted and what materials are drawn upon to accomplish those practices.
Underlying the importance of that, any approach to reduce food loss and waste must give primacy
to the interaction between institutions, materiality, and practices. This thesis also opens new
avenues for researchers to examine and better understand which social relations lead to food loss
production, and conceptualising losses and waste as issues of power dynamics will help better
understand inequalities in food systems. Shifting attention from what is lost or wasted to
understanding why the loss and waste occur. It opens new ways to conceptualise food loss and
waste as power issues and inequalities in food systems.