Fruit & Vegetables – LOWINFOOD

LOWINFOOD implementations in the F&V value chain

LOWINFOOD commitment in the F&V value chain

LOWINFOOD aims to demonstrate the efficacy of four types of innovations, which should be able to address the problem of fruit and vegetables food loss and waste across the upstream value chain, from agricultural production up to retail.

In practice, the objective is to measure to what extent these innovations reduce losses and waste of fruit and vegetables along the supply chain; improve its efficiency, and increase the use and consumption of fruit and vegetables through recovery and redistribution.

Innovations being tested and improved in LOWINFOOD for fruit & vegetables value chain

Software to manage withdraws of fruit & vegetables and donating them to charities

This institutional innovation consists of software that records all the fruit & vegetables products withdrawn from the markets by producer organisations. Besides, the software manages the donation to charities of the food withdrawn. It has been created by the government of the Emilia-Romagna Region (Italy) and it is operating in there since 2012.

Cooperation system between farmers and food service sector

This organizational innovation aims to promote cooperation agreements between fruit and vegetables producers and restaurants, in order to reuse unharvested or surplus agricultural products. This way, the gap between farmers and actors in the food service sector will be bridged on an economic and professional scale.

Read more and watch the video about this innovation

Unverschwendet is based in Austria and the products are distributed in Austria. However, the surplus used can also be from other countries such as Hungary, Serbia, Italy, Germany, etc.

Unverschwendet buys surplus fruits and vegetables from the beginning of the value chain (farmers, production, storage, etc.) and distributes this surplus to various channels such as the products of the own brand (Unverschwendet) or the cooperation with HOFER called Rettenswert.

Until now they only rescued fruits and vegetables but now they extend the product range to crop and dried fruits. The goal of Unverschwendet is to rescue more than 250 tons of food over the next 6 months.

B2B digital market place for reducing food losses in the vegetables food industry

Leroma is a start-up that has devised a digital market place for food commodities; this platform builds the bridge between producers, offering vegetables, and manufacturers, or retailers, searching for the products. Through the digital market place, vegetables can be offered locally or globally, and it also reveals alternative distribution channels for products with cosmetic defects, among others.

Sales-forecasting software for supermarkets, allowing a better management of orders

A machine learning algorithm forecasts sales of fresh produce in supermarkets. Based on store-specific historical data an algorithm based on machine learning is trained to forecast sales of individual products of the fruits & vegetable department, on a daily/weekly basis.

Such technology is expected to produce accurate forecasts that can help food category manager to prevent surplus ordering, thus reducing the number of unsold products, and therefore the quantity of waste produced at the supermarket