Farmers are being provided new advice on how best to measure food surplus and waste to identify the causes and help inform where action is needed.
It is estimated that around 3.6 million tonnes of food either goes to waste on UK farms each year, or is surplus to requirement.
According to food waste expert WRAP, that's a potential £1.2 billion loss to the sector - equivalent to 7 percent of the total food harvest.
New guidance expanding the reach of the UK’s Food Waste Reduction Roadmap, developed by the group and leading trade bodies, has now been published.
Experts have designed the resources to help growers apply the principles of Target-Measure-Act to their operations at this key stage in the food supply chain.
Peter Maddox, Director of WRAP, said: “Measuring food surplus and waste is the first step to tackling the problem, and our guides will show where action is needed on farm – whatever the scale of production or crop type, and whether hand or machine-harvested.
"They are intuitive to use and set out the actions necessary to measure consistently to make comparisons over time, and between growers.”
Earlier crop-specific assessments by WRAP highlighted the potential that widescale measuring provides to help tackle food waste.
The organisation found that around 19% of all lettuces went unharvested in 2015, with 38,000 tonnes lost across the sector - worth £7million.
This varied significantly between growers, with a range from 7 percent to 47 percent of production ending up as waste.
Supporting growers to better measure and share their waste data can help identify opportunities, and offers huge potential to improve productivity, the group says.
