Submit a Manuscript to the Journal

Cogent Food & Agriculture

For an Article Collection on

Food Waste Prevention Along the Supply Chain: Interventions, Strategies and Tools to Achieve SDG 12.3

Manuscript deadline
31 March 2024

Cover image - Cogent Food & Agriculture

Article collection guest advisor(s)

Prof. Matteo Vittuari, University of Bologna, Italy
[email protected]

Dr Laura García Herrero, Joint Research Centre, European Commission, Italy
[email protected]

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Food Waste Prevention Along the Supply Chain: Interventions, Strategies and Tools to Achieve SDG 12.3

Cogent Food & Agriculture is pleased to invite you to submit your research to the upcoming Article Collection "Food Waste Prevention Along the Supply Chain: Interventions, Strategies and Tools to Achieve SDG 12.3" organized by Guest Advisors, Prof. Matteo Vittuari and Dr. Laura García Herrero.

Food waste occurs along the food supply chain, causing negative impacts on the environment, economy, and society and preventing the achievement of SDG 12.3. This issue hampers reaching sustainable food systems while becoming a major issue in feeding a global population facing several uncertainties (e.g., rise of inflation and conflicts challenging food trade). Although several initiatives were conducted by different actors to reduce food waste, their effectiveness remains to be fully evaluated. This article collection invites research focusing on unveiling the direct and indirect effects of food waste prevention initiatives and their impacts across the food supply chain. In addition, initiatives with other objectives like organic food promotion may also contribute to food waste reduction with unexpected motivations such as better planning in response to higher food cost. These measures – or food waste levers – are also valuable and worth to be identified. Therefore, the article collection calls for scientific research with solid conceptual grounding that could bring innovative ideas to a range of topics, including but not limited to the following:

    • Evaluation of food waste prevention initiatives. Initiatives could be consumer behaviour change interventions targeting social norms, as well as either public or private policy.
    • Analysis to achieve the balance between food waste and sustainable and healthy diets. The test of interventions that could ideally achieve multiple benefits (i.e., nudging food waste reduction while promoting vegetable consumption).
    • The use of technology to reduce food loss and waste along the food supply chain.
    • Application of life cycle thinking approach to evaluate food waste economic, environmental and social impacts and identify burden shift of food waste prevention.
    • Food waste quantification across different sectors and supply chain segments (e.g., public caterings, private caterings) to identify hotspots for action.
    • Scientific ground that helps to develop effective initiatives, e.g. identifying food waste drivers and/or reduction.

Submission underpinned by various research methods, including qualitative, quantitative, or mixed, are encouraged. Both empirical studies and conceptual investigations are welcome. We particularly encourage submission spanning across multiple disciplines and geographical borders.

Some proposed keywords:

  • Food waste prevention/reduction initiatives
  • Sustainable food systems
  • Sustainable and healthy diets
  • Sustainability impacts
  • Consumer behaviour
  • Social norms
  • Food policy
  • Policy impact
  • SDGs

All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo desk assessment and peer-review as part of our standard editorial process. Guest Advisors will not be involved in peer-reviewing manuscripts unless they are an existing member of the Editorial Board.

Please review the journal scope and author submission instructions prior to submitting a manuscript.

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is 31st March 2024.

Please contact Marya Baig at [email protected] with any queries and discounts regarding this Article Collection.


Article Collection Guest Advisors

Prof. Matteo Vittuari is a full Professor in agricultural and food policy and agricultural policy evaluation at the Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences (DISTAL) of the University of Bologna (Italy). He worked as international consultant for the evaluation of EU and FAO funded projects in Europe and Central Asia. His main fields of expertise include: agricultural, food and rural economics and policy; bioenergy economics and policy; bioenergy system analysis; agricultural and rural policy evaluation; life cycle assessment; cost benefit analysis; economic modelling using different approaches. He has published over 80 scientific articles, reports, book chapters and books including “The Routledge International Handbook of Comparative Rural Policy”. He is currently coordinating the sustainability assessment Work Package within the H2020 FoodE (Food Systems in European Cities). He also coordinated the behavioural economics Work Package within the Horizon2020 REFRESH and the policy Work Package within the FP7 FUSIONS and participated to a number of other international and European projects under H2020, PRIMA, Interreg.

Dr. Laura García Herrero is a Scientific Project Officer at the European Commission, supporting the European Green Deal, mainly within the Farm to Fork Strategy and the Circular Economy Action Plan. Her focus is on food waste measurement and sustainability evaluation and application of life cycle thinking to food systems - mainly evaluation of the environmental impact using life cycle assessment and the impact categories recommended in the Environmental Footprint by the European Commission. She coordinates experts from the European Consumer Food Waste Forum.

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Submission Instructions

All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo desk assessment and peer-review as part of our standard editorial process. Guest Advisors will not be involved in peer-reviewing manuscripts unless they are an existing member of the Editorial Board.

Please review the journal scope and author submission instructions prior to submitting a manuscript.

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is 31st March 2024.

Please contact Marya Baig at [email protected] with any queries and discounts regarding this Article Collection.

Instructions for AuthorsSubmit an Article

All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo desk assessment and peer-review as part of our standard editorial process. Guest Advisors for this collection will not be involved in peer-reviewing manuscripts unless they are an existing member of the Editorial Board. Please review the journal Aims and Scope and author submission instructions prior to submitting a manuscript.