Thumbnail Image

Capacity-building to reduce avoidable food waste in micro, small and medium food processing enterprises and in retail










Also available in:
No results found.

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Thumbnail Image
    Book (stand-alone)
    Good packaging practices for micro, small and medium-sized food processing enterprises in the Caribbean Community and Common Market 2024
    Also available in:
    No results found.

    Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) continue to serve as a major source of employment and income generation in the agriculture and tourism sectors in countries of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM). Most MSMEs are small businesses run by families or by a few individuals. While this helps to keep labour and overhead costs to a minimum, it creates a suboptimum economy of scale. Competition is also increased because of the large number of small operations and challenges that hinder penetration of the export market, especially with the increasing complexities of international standards demanded by developed countries. Additionally, rising standards of living in many CARICOM countries have increased demand from domestic consumers for higher quality food and assurances of food safety. This creates the need for urgent measures that will help MSMEs in CARICOM to become more efficient in crop production, supply chain management, food processing and packaging techniques and to gain a better understanding of the changing nature of the domestic, regional and international markets.This technical manual focuses on food packaging and seeks to highlight its critical role in reducing food loss and waste. Users of this manual will also be exposed to packaging techniques that help improve the marketability of agricultural commodities produced and processed in the region. This potential has been fostered by an increasing middle-class population, a vibrant market for tourism, a diversity of cultures and, thanks to an increasing diaspora, increasing markets in importing countries.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Book (series)
    Policy measures for micro, small and medium food processing enterprises in the Asian region 2015
    Also available in:
    No results found.

    Small and medium food processing enterprises (SMEs) play an important economic role and are a major source of employment in both developing and advanced economies. In Asia and the Pacific, formal and informal SMEs account for over 97 percent of all enterprises, employ over half of the workforce and contribute significantly to economic growth. Micro, small and medium food processing enterprises (MSMFEs) constitute a major segment of this sector. This publication is the outcome of a regional works hop convened in December 2103 to promote agro-industrial policy measures for MSMFEs in Asia. It includes status reports from nine Asian countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka and Thailand – and a review of the key issues and policy recommendations based on the findings and deliberations of the workshop.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Policy brief
    Supporting forest sector micro, small and medium enterprises at scale
    The experience of the FAO-EU FLEGT Programme
    2021
    Also available in:
    No results found.

    Between 2016-2021, the FAO-EU FLEGT Programme funded 96 MSME support projects in 20 countries globally. These projects reached 3,300 MSMEs in total, but the 41 projects with a specific capacity building focus were able to train an average of 71 MSMEs per project. Although these projects were instrumental in helping beneficiaries to operate legally and access new markets, the number of MSMEs reached remains small compared to the sheer number that require support in tropical timber-producing countries. The current scale of engagement is not entirely limited by investment and resources, but also by several challenges that make it inherently difficult to effectively engage MSMEs. As part of a Programme-wide global experience capitalisation process, staff members conducted interviews with local partners and, where possible, end beneficiaries of the projects. Local partners were asked to reflect on strategies that could have allowed them to reach more MSMEs in their projects, and on the broader enabling conditions that would need to be put in place to enable MSMEs to participate in legal timber production at a larger scale. Through these interviews, and the collective experience of these MSME support projects, the Programme has identified strategies for overcoming these challenges and that could be adopted by future interventions to reach tens of thousands – rather than hundreds – of MSMEs. These strategies are discussed in the paper.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

No results found.