How Much Food Loss and Waste Do Countries with Problems with Food Security Generate?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Title: How much food loss and waste do countries with problems with food security generate?

Journal: agriculture

ID：agriculture-2306694

 

On the one hand, there are more than 700 million people are affected by hunger, and on the other hand, one-third of food is wasted, thus, this paper uses a top-down mass balance approach to estimate food loss and waste of countries with food security problems. The topic of this paper is interesting, and the methodology is appropriate. My comments are as follows:

Major comments:

The contribution of this paper is not significant. As you stated in the paper that globally food waste equivalent to 1.3 billion tons per year estimated by FAO, thus, what’s the contribution of this paper?

How did the authors get the food loss and waste rate for different supply chains in each country? Different stage of supply chain may have different food loss and waste rate. Please provide readers with more information.

Minor comments:

You can delete the citation in Abstract.

 

The writing could be improved significantly. I suggest the authors to polish the manuscript by a native speaker. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Please see the attached file with our response to comments. 

Kind regards, 

Authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper aims at estimating food loss and waste (FLW) by country's level of food security, using a top-down mass balance approach. The research problem is important and topical. The paper may be of interest to the readers, however, before the possible acceptation for publishing, the manuscript needs to be improved. Below some specific comments are given.

 

Abstract

It would be valuable to emphasise the novelty and contributions of the study.

 

Introduction

To be consistent with the aim of the research, more attention should be paid to the estimates of FLW at the country’s level, when presenting the literature review.

Novelty and contributions of the study should be clarified in more detail.

 

Theoretical background and literature review

I can’t see the reference to Table 1 in the main body of the paper. The Table has not been sufficiently described as well.

 

Materials and Methods

In general, data and research methods are described clearly. Authors are also aware of the study limitations. However, there is one minor question. It is not clear how those five clusters of countries by FLW and food security levels were formed. This should be specified. If the classification of the GFSI is employed, this should be clearly explained. And what about “without EIU Index” cluster?

 

Results and discussion

Table 8 has not been sufficiently described. There is still a potential to make some valuable comments on this.

Broader discussion on the research results related to the countries with the worst level of food security would be advisable.

 

Conclusion

In the Conclusion section, it would be valuable to include policy implications and recommendations for the value chain participants in order to decrease the level of FLW. This way the paper would reveal its utilitarian value. It is also a good practice to indicate the directions for further research.

 

Formal remarks

Figure 1 on page 8 should be numbered as 2. Next Tables should be renumbered as well.

References to Tables and Figures are lacking in the main body of the text.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

Please see the attached file with our response to comments. 

Kind regards, 

Authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I appreciate the efforts the authors made to revise the paper. I recommend accept this paper in current version.