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Project Title

Strengthening Public-Private Partnership to Reduce Food Losses in the Supply Chain

Project Year

2013

Project Number

M SCE 02 2013A

Project Session

Session 1

Project Type

Multi-Year

Project Status

Completed Project
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Project No.

M SCE 02 2013A

Project Title

*
Strengthening Public-Private Partnership to Reduce Food Losses in the Supply Chain

Project Status

Completed Project

Fund Account

*
APEC Support Fund

Sub-fund

ASF: General Fund

Project Year

2013

Project Session

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Session 1

Sponsoring Forum

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Agricultural Technical Cooperation Working Group (ATCWG)

Topics

Agriculture

Committee

SOM Steering Committee on Economic and Technical Cooperation (SCE)

Other Fora Involved

Policy Partnership on Food Security (PPFS)

Other Non-APEC Stakeholders Involved

ABAC
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)
International Livestock Research Insstitute (ILRI)
WorldFish

Proposing Economy(ies)

Chinese Taipei

Co-Sponsoring Economies

Canada; Chile; Indonesia; Japan; Korea; New Zealand; Papua New Guinea; Peru; Philippines; Singapore; Thailand; United States; Viet Nam

Expected Start Date

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01/01/2013

Expected Completion Date

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31/12/2017

APEC Funding

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498,184

Co-funding Amount

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636,600

Co-funding Percentage

56.10%

Total Project Value

1,134,784

Project Proponent Name 1

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Dr Chen Chun-Yen (new PO wef 19 July 2016)

Job Title 1

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Director General

Organization 1

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Department of International Affairs, Council of Agriculture

Telephone 1

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886-2 23124647

Email 1

*
ksll@mail.coa.gov.tw; tracyt@mail.coa.gov.tw; chenyh@mail.coa.gov.tw

Project Proponent Name 2

Not Applicable

Job Title 2

Not Applicable

Organization 2

Not Applicable

Telephone 2

Not Applicable

Email 2

Not Applicable

Declaration

*
Dr Chen Chun-Yen

Project Summary

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Based on the UN’s research, roughly one-third of the edible parts of food produced for human consumption gets lost or wasted globally, which is about 1.3 billion ton per year. Therefore, it is of vital importance to strengthen partnership among public and private sectors of APEC economies in developing policy recommendations and solutions on reducing post-harvest losses and waste, as well as enhancing food quality and safety, so as to contribute to food security in the Asia-Pacific region.

Since APEC is composed of developed and developing economies, the food loss issue raises more concerns to developing economies, whereas the food waste issue to developed economies. The project aims to address post-harvest losses in all stages of the entire food supply chain in the APEC region by strengthening public-private partnership. This project is designed to be implemented in three phases within five years.

In Phase I (2013), a three-days seminar will be held in August 2013 in Chinese Taipei, providing (1) a broad understanding of post-harvest food losses; (2) identifying key issues and challenges; (3) formulating the preliminary methodology on food crops; (4) deliberating on the strategies and action plans of cooperation among APEC economies. and facilitating exchanges of best practices from public and private sectors among APEC economies; and (5) promoting exchanges of experience-sharing among APEC economies.

Built on the outcomes of Phase 1, Phase II (2014-2016) will convene annual seminar in each year with different themes of post-harvest losses as follows: fruit and vegetables in 2014, fishery and livestock products in 2015, and food wastes issues occurred on the food consumption in 2016, including food wastes from individual household’s food preparation, supermarkets, to restaurants. This project will continue to revise the drafted methodology of APEC food losses assessment after receiving feedback from APEC economies, and extends its application to different types of foods for three consecutive years.

Phase III (2017) is to synthesize the previous progress of the project and to generate the final conclusion of policy recommendations, action plans, the final completion of toolkit and dataset, and a consolidated methodology of APEC food losses assessment. The high-level policy dialogue meeting, which concludes the outcomes in the past five year, will be held for an in-depth discussion on the achievements, follow-up policy recommendations and strategies, in order to achieve the goal of APEC food security.

Relevance

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The population in the APEC region accounts for 41% of world population and 53% of global cereal production and almost 70% of fish production. Nevertheless, according to the research conducted by the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), post-harvest losses in Asia alone are estimated at 30% of global food production annually, valued at $5 billion, and the number of food losses in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to be higher. In light of increasing importance of food security in APEC’s agenda, reducing food losses has become one of the most imperative issues to achieving sustainable growth of agriculture. Given the importance of food security in APEC’s agenda in recent years, reducing food losses has been repeatedly underscored as one of primary tasks to safeguarding APEC food security in relevant APEC fora and leaders’ meetings as follows:


§   Respond to key objectives of 2012 APEC Economic Leaders’ Declaration, in which APEC leaders determined to “reduce post-harvest losses along the entire food supply chain…”

§   Address a critical issue indicated in the 2012 Kazan Declaration on APEC Food Security, which highlights the significance of “decrease post-harvest losses” in order to “achieve sustainable agricultural growth.

§  Represent continuous efforts and concrete actions to respond to the 2010 Niigata Declaration on APEC Food Security, in which it stressed: “We encourage APEC economies to cooperate in reducing food losses in all stages in the value chain from production and processing to distribution and consumption by sharing best practices.”

§  Support ATCWG’s Medium-Term Workplan (2010-2015), indicating that the goal of food security can be achieved by adopting “post-harvest interventions to ensure food security.”

§  Relate to the APEC Policy Partnership on Food Security (PPFS)’s Action Plan for 2012-2013 of developing a road map to achieve the long-term goal of APEC food system by 2020.

Hence, this project will not only contribute to APEC’s key priorities in terms of facilitating food security, but also meet ATCWG’s Medium-Term Workplan and PPFS’s Action Plan, so as to take both APEC and related fora into consideration.

Objectives

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(1)    To identify key issues on reducing post-harvest losses and costs along the entire food supply chain and improving food safety and quality in the APEC region; (2)    To seek best practices in private and public sectors on reducing post-harvest losses and costs, to enhance the role of public-private partnership (PPP) along the entire food supply chain, to reinforce policy coordination among APEC economies, and to establish a milestone for APEC food security; and

(3)   To search and identify practical solutions, to enhance capacity-building on reducing food losses and costs as well as improving food safety and quality, to establish a toolkit and dataset on reducing food losses, and to develop a consolidated methodology of APEC food losses assessment, thus contributing to safeguarding food security in the APEC region.

Multi-Year Approach

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Given the complexity of post-harvest food losses issues, the encompassing objectives of this project cannot be achieved in a single year and need to be implemented step by step with a multi-year approach, to ensure the success of the project. Since the realization of this project is hinged on different but closely related themes in each phase, this project not only needs collective cooperation and extensive teamwork among different APEC fora, including ATCWG, PPFS, FSCF, and ABAC, but also requires valuable inputs from other regional and international stakeholders as well as from public and private sectors, to account for the diverse aspects of food losses issues. In this project, the close interconnections and continuous coordination of five-year activities require complementarity of outputs from each phase. A multi-year approach allows cohesive execution and ensures the continuity of project, so it cannot only generate workable and concrete deliverables, but also pave the way for building a milestone for APEC’s food security.

APEC Multi-Year Project funds is the best source of funding since it allows the project to be executed in a gradual and continuous fashion and makes the project’s implementation feasible. The fund promotes wide-spectrum collaboration among APEC fora and contributes to the incorporation of inputs from other non-APEC stakeholders and members in private sector. With the support of this far-sighted approach, this project will generate more brainstorming, profound deliberation, and effective strategies and action plans for long-term solutions on reducing food losses and costs. Given that the coverage of the project spans across food crops, fruit and vegetables, fishery and animal products, and food waste, the complexity of food loss issue can only be fully addressed via a multi-year project approach for generating promising conclusions and a useful toolkit of solutions on reducing food losses for APEC economies’ needs.

Beneficiaries and Outputs

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Project outputs:

Phase I (2013)

·        Establish a FPN and a draft of FPN’s terms of reference (ToR).

·          Undertake the study on current status and key issues of post-harvest food losses in APEC region: this study investigates the current status and critical issues with regard to food losses in APEC region to serve as a baseline and reference for APEC economies to deliberate in the 2013 seminar

·      Launching the 2013 seminar on reducing post-harvest losses on food crops:

·      Propose the draft agenda of seminar and related activities by a task force of Chinese Taipei

·      Seminar proceedings of 2013: including all meeting papers, presentations, handouts, etc.

·      Progress report of 2013: this report includes the final conclusion, policy recommendations, best practices, and the development of methodology, toolkit, and dataset discussed in the seminar.

·      Hold a capacity-building workshop/training program: It will be held back-to-back with the seminar under the theme of reducing post-harvest losses on food crops.

·      Undertaking the study on formulating the methodology of food losses assessment, a toolkit, and a dataset on reducing food losses

·      Study and propose a preliminary methodology of food losses assessment on food crops.

·      Design the framework of a toolkit and a dataset on reducing food losses and enrich them with practical solutions collected from best practices and successful stories from APEC economies.

·      The preliminary methodology and the framework of toolkit and dataset will be discussed and endorsed in the 2013 seminar. Participants will be invited to give feedback of any application in their economies by filling out an electronic-survey approximately 3 months after the seminar, in order to monitor and trace the progress in the project dissemination.

Phase II (2014-2016)


·        Tracing the progress of applications, improving the methodology, and enriching the toolkit and dataset:

·      The progress of the project will be monitored and traced via the members of FPN from each economy, who collect feedback regarding actual applications of the toolkit, the methodology, and the dataset launched in the previous year. The task force will improve, revise, and amend the aforementioned outputs by taking account of APEC economies’ feedbacks.

·      The methodology of food losses assessment on different types of food will be built upon the first year’s methodology output and be discussed in the annual seminar. The feedbacks regarding the actual application and modification of methodology from APEC economies via the members of FPN will be adopted for further improvement.

·      The content of toolkit and dataset that collect solutions on reducing food losses will be continuingly enriched and expanded after compiling feedbacks and best practices annually from APEC economies.   

·      Progress report will contain the modification of methodology and the improvement as well as the performance of toolkit and dataset in a given year.

·      Launching the annual seminar on reducing post-harvest losses and the modification and extension of the methodology of food loses assessment on other types of food:

·      Propose the draft agenda and related activities of each year’s seminar by the task force.

·      Annual seminar proceedings (2014-2016): covering all meeting materials, papers, presentations, and real-case demons.

·      Yearly progress report (2014-2016): the report covers: (1) the review of progress in the previous year concerning the applications of the methodology, toolkit, and dataset by APEC economies; (2) the final conclusion and policy recommendation in each year’s seminar; (3) the new development and modification of the methodology, toolkit, and dataset in a given year.

·      Hold capacity-building workshop/training program: In accordance with the themes of year, the workshop/training program will be held back-to-back with annual seminar, which is designed to satisfy the need of developing economies. For instance, since the theme of 2014 seminar is focused on fruit and vegetables, related workshop/training program in that year may be “reducing fruit and vegetables losses by improving packaging technologies”.

Phase III (2017)

·        Launching a high level policy dialogue meeting:

·      A final progress report, covering the overview of project implementation and development of the methodology, toolkit, and dataset over the past four years, will be finalized by the task force, submitted to the high level policy dialogue meeting for deliberation, and uploaded to the APIP website for wide-spread dissemination.

·      The final outputs of the project, including policy recommendations, action plans, the consolidated methodology of APEC food losses assessment, the completion of toolkit and dataset, etc., will be deliberated, endorsed, and submitted to related APEC fora, including ATCWG, PPFS, etc., and APEC senior official meetings (SOM). The final conclusion and declaration of the meeting will seek adaptation by APEC leaders’ and ministers’ declarations.

·      A final project report will be delivered after the high level policy dialogue meeting, which will conclude overall progress of the project, improvement on reducing food losses in APEC economies, evaluation of long-term impact of the project, and follow-up policy recommendations after the closure of the project.

·        Final consolidation of the methodology, toolkit, and dataset on reducing food losses: The consolidated methodology of APEC food losses assessments covering variety of food types will be finalized for APEC economies’ applications. The establishment of a complete toolkit and dataset will be installed with an easy on-line access on the APIP website for wide-ranging applications by different users from APEC economies.

·          All outputs of the project indicated above will be uploaded in the Asia-Pacific Information Platform on Food Security (APIP) website for facilitating information dissemination.

The direct project participants and users:

§  Policy makers from public sector: Senior officials in government institutes and agencies can benefit from policy recommendations and the methodology of food losses assessment to strengthen their capacities of formulating effective policies on reducing food losses.

§  Relevant stakeholder along the food supply chain from private sector: Farmers, food producers (e.g., agro-business companies), distributors (e.g. shipping companies), and other relevant stakeholders (sellers, recyclers, supermarket managers, restaurant owners, etc.) along the entire food supply chain can reduce food losses and costs by learning from best practices, applying toolkit and dataset, and enhancing their capacities and business opportunities via technology exhibition and experience-sharing in the project.

§  Academic scholars in food-loss-related institutes and experts from international/regional organizations: Specialists and scholars in food-loss-related research institutes and centers (e.g., FAO, AVRDC-The World Vegetable Center, International Rice Research Institute, Postharvest Technology Center of UC Davis) can share their expertise, the latest research outcomes, and policy recommendations with APEC economies, while benefiting from valuable data and practical solutions generated from the project.

§  NGOs related to food-loss and food-waste: Activists from relevant environmental protection and consumerism NGOs (e.g., the Natural Resources Defense Council, Friends of the Earth) can obtain an opportunity to promote their ideas of environmental protection, combating food wastes, encouraging food recycle, etc.

Dissemination

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The outputs of the project will be disseminated through the following methods:


·      Publications:

(1) Annual seminar proceedings (2013-2016): This project will produce a report on the annual seminar proceedings, which includes meeting papers, presentations, and other handouts relevant to the overall project propose. The hardcopy of this report will be provided to participants and all interested members from public and private sectors in all APEC economies. It is expected that one hundred (100) sets will be required. Electronic version of the report will also be available with the hardcopy of the report and all meeting materials can be downloaded from the APIP website.

(2) A report on the current status and key issues of post-harvest losses in the APEC region (2013): This project will investigate the current status and critical issues with regard to food losses in the APEC region in the first year of the project. The purpose of this report is to serve as a baseline and reference for APEC economies to deliberate on feasible actions to address food losses issues in the 2013 seminar. This report will be provided to relevant stakeholders and meeting participants. About 150 sets of hardcopies will be distributed to meeting participants and related agencies or institutes. PDF versions of the report will also be distributed electronically via email or can be downloaded from the APIP website.

(3) Annual progress report (2013-2016): This project will publish an annual progress report after the seminar each year. The report comprises three sections: i. the review of progress in the previous year concerning the applications of the methodology, toolkit, and dataset by APEC economies (except in 2013); ii. the final conclusion, achievements, and policy recommendation in each year’s seminar; iii. the development and modification of the methodology, toolkit, and dataset in a given year (2014-2016).

(4) A final progress report (2017): This report concludes the overall project implementation and development of project outputs, such as methodology, toolkit, and dataset, over the past four years. The report will be deliberated in the high level policy dialogue meeting and endorsed by meeting participants.

(5) A final project report (2017): This report will summarize project achievements, conclude overall progress and performance of the project, examine improvement on reducing food losses in APEC economies, evaluate long-term impact of the project, and propose follow-up policy recommendations after the closure of the project.

(6) E-Newsletters (2013-2017): this project will publish E-newsletters on a regular basis to member economies, in order to timely disseminate relevant information and activities, maximize network effect, and ensure sustainability of the project.

(7) APIP website: this project will utilize the APIP website as a multifunctional platform for dissemination of project outputs indicated above, exchanges of best practices, collection of solutions on reducing food losses, etc.

·      Related demonstrations: In the spirit of promoting Public-Private Partnership (PPP), this project is designed to fully utilize the seminar for collective deliberation on reducing food losses, while providing an opportunity for related firms from private sector to showcase their advanced technologies and know-how in reducing food losses in each stage of food supply chain. Hence, this project intends to hold a theme-related business fair and exhibition, back-to-back with a yearly seminar, for facilitating the dissemination of technologies and promoting capacity-building in a much more efficient manner.   

·      Target audience:

(1) Senior officials from relevant public sectors agencies with authority of policy-making.

(2) Business leaders from agro-industry business, food producers and distributors, and other relevant stakeholders alone food supply chain in private sector.

(3) Experts, leaders, and trainers from NGOs, and relevant regional and international organizations related to food losses and waste.

(4) Academic researchers, experts, and educators involved in similar or related projects. For the sake of promoting public goods and enhancing APEC food security, there is no intention to sell any output arising from this project.

Gender

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This project will ensure no existence of gender-biases during the design and implementation of the project, in accordance with the APEC Guide for Gender Analysis. In terms of women’s overall participation, this project will be abided by the principle of equal opportunity for men and women, based on their expertise, not on their gender, for being qualified speakers, trainers, and participants. Hence, both groups will have equal chances of sharing their opinions, experiences, and make their respective contributions to the common goals of reducing food losses along the food supply chain in the project. Moreover, women will enjoy equal treatments as men to share relevant knowledge, information, resources, and training courses in terms of capacity-building process.

In addition, given the important role women played in the entire food supply chain, such as food producers, food-handling actors, and consumers, this project aims to highlight the crucial role of female in lowering food losses and wastes and to embed women’s perspectives in related topics as appropriate, such as reducing food wastes in kitchen and dining table. Female-experts will also be involved as the members of FPN, implementers, and trainers in training workshops as proposed in this project. It will be attempted to achieve at least 40 percent of women participation in the project activities.   

Regarding the project implementation, women will be involved in all stages of the project, from planning the agenda-setting, carrying out various activities, to relevant report-writing, in all tasks to be taken, particularly, in the decision-making process.

Work Plan

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As outlined above, this project will be carried out in three phases with respectively different but closely linked objectives and actions. The outputs expected to deliver in each phase are carefully tailored to correspond to the objectives and actions. This project will be implemented by the FPN and the organizing committee of Chinese Taipei. Nevertheless, the keen involvement of all interested APEC member economies and related APEC fora from both public and private sectors is particularly emphasized and designed in this project. The detailed work plan including key activities, timeline, places, actions, and expected delivering outputs is listed as follows:

Phase 1 : Preparation, Research and Identification of Key Issues (2013)

Key Activities

Time/Place

Actions and Inter-linkages

Beneficiaries and Stakeholders

Deliverable Outputs

Establish the Focal Point Network (FPN) in ATCWG meeting

Jun 2013 – Jakarta, Indonesia

The members of FPN will come from APEC economies, consisting of members from both public and private sectors.  Via close consultation with APEC economies and APEC fora, the FPN will recommend experts and trainers and providing comments on seminar agenda and the deliverables

Government officials

Related Stakeholders along food supply chain in private sectors

ToR of FPN proposal of agenda and activities of 2013

Study the current status and key issues of post-harvest food losses in the APEC region

May – Aug 2013

The study will be conducted by the task force, with assistance of interested APEC economies and APEC Policy Support Unit (PSU)

Government officials

Stakeholders in private sector

Experts and scholars

Report on current status and key issues of post-harvest losses in the APEC region

Circulate via E-newsletter

Launch a seminar on reducing post-harvest food losses on food crops, and;

A back-to-back  workshop

Aug 2013 – Chinese Taipei

The selection of participants will be recommended by FPN from candidates who are high-level policy-makers, experts, and influential leaders from public and private sectors.

Provide broad and profound discussions on reducing food losses, Including relevant best practices and successful stories.

Deliberate on the preliminary methodology of food losses assessment on food crops, toolkit, and dataset.

Survey on project implementation: task force will collect feedbacks from APEC economies via FPN regarding actual application and implementations of policy recommendations, methodology, toolkit, and dataset, about three months after the closure of seminar.

Government officials

Relates stakeholders along food supply chain in private sectors

NGOs

Experts and scholars

A seminar proceeding containing all meeting materials

A progress report, including conclusion, policy recommendations, etc

Upload all reports to APIP website and circulate all information via E-newsletter

Survey on project progress

Phase II – Investigation of Food Losses (2014-2018)

Theme – fruit and vegetables

Hold a seminar and a back-to-back workshop

Apr – Aug 2014

3 voluntary economies, respectively, will hold a seminar and workshop in their economies in each year (2014-2016)

Tracing project progress, improving methodology, toolkit, and dataset: after collecting feedback from FPN, task force will improve and extend the application of methodology to targeted food of the year, while continuing to update and enrich toolkit and dataset yearly by collecting best practices from APEC economies.

Seminar: It will review progress on the application of methodology, toolkit, and dataset, deliberate on policy recommendations and the modification of methodology on different types of food losses

Workshop: It is designed to address the problems developing economies face under the theme of seminar, by inviting experts and trainers from private sector to provide better solutions and technologies for enhancing capacity-building on reducing food losses.

Government officials

Related stakeholders along food supply chain in private sectors

NGOs

Experts and scholars

Annual seminar proceeding

Annual progress report, including review of progress policy recommendations, and extended development of project outputs

Survey on project progress yearly

Demo video of best practices

E-newsletters and APIP uploading

Theme – fishery and livestock products

Hold a seminar and a back-to-back workshop

Apr – Aug 2015

Theme – restaurants and supermarkets

Hold a seminar and a back-to-back workshop

Apr – Aug 2016

Phase III – Consolidation (2017)

Undertake the final progress report of the project

Jan – Aug 2017, Chinese Taipei

Based on the results in Phase II, the final progress report will review the overall project implementation and the progressive development of project outputs, like methodology, toolkit, and dataset, over the past four years.

The report will be provided as a project outcome in the high level policy dialogue meeting for deliberation and endorsement

Government officials

Related stakeholders along food supply chain in private sectors’

NGOs

Experts and scholars

The draft of the final progress report

Consolidating the methodology, final completion of toolkit and dataset

Jan – Jul 2017, Chinese Taipei

The consolidated methodology of APEC food losses assessments covering variety of food types will be finalized.

A complete toolkit and comprehensive dataset will be installed with an easy on-line access on the APIP website for wide-spread applications and dissemination among APEC economies

Government officials

Related stakeholders along food supply chain in private sectors’

NGOs

Experts and scholars

A consolidated methodology of APEC food losses

A completion of toolkit and dataset on reducing food losses

Hold the high-level policy dialogue meeting on reducing food losses and costs in the APEC region

Aug 2017, Chinese Taipei

A high-policy dialogue meeting will discuss the overall progress of the project, endorse project outputs, like methodology, toolkit and dataset, and policy recommendations, and deliberate on follow-up policies, action plans, and strategies to reduce food losses and enhance food security in APEC region.

Government officials

Related stakeholders along food supply chain in private sectors’

NGOs

Experts and scholars

Policy recommendations at high level meeting

A final project report

E-newsletter and APIP updated

Risks

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Given the complex nature of food losses and the diversity of APEC economies in terms of the levels of economic development, agricultural structure, dietary culture, etc., it may be very difficult to identify common concerns with regard to food losses. Hence, it is of vital importance to facilitate close cooperation and active participation of all APEC economies and related APEC fora, in order to ensure that the outcomes of the project can meet each APEC economy’s needs and expectations, so as to actually make constructive contributions to helping APEC economies in reducing food losses, individually, and collectively. In sum, risks may occur while implementing the project and can be moderated as follows:

Phase I: Agenda-setting and active involvement of private sector. As outlined above, it may be difficult to identify critical and common issues regarding food losses collectively concerned among APEC economies. Hence it is essential to seek consensus among APEC economies before finalizing the agenda of the seminar. Likewise, since private sector plays a major role in lowering food losses in the food supply chain, it is necessary to obtain full involvement of private sector in order to ensure the outputs of the project to be practical and effective. This project intends to conduct broader and intensive consultations with both public and private sectors among APEC economies before the 2013 seminar, in order to cover the most issues and concerns in the agenda-setting and meanwhile to obtain active participation from private sector. 

Phase II: Searching potential candidates in private sector as trainers for capacity-building. One of key components in Phase II is to promote capacity-building, so as to assist APEC developing economies in lowering their unnecessary food losses. Nevertheless, since the needs of each economy for addressing food loss issues differ, it may not be easy to obtain satisfactory trainers from private sector to meet each economy’s expectation. To reduce this risk, this project aims to closely cooperate with ABAC, PPFS, interested APEC member economies, and relevant business associations for obtaining the best candidates as trainers to effectively enhancing capacity-building of APEC developing economies in reducing food losses.

Phase III: Consolidation of the methodology of APEC food losses assessment. One of critical tasks to be completed in Phase III is to consolidate the methodology of APEC food losses assessment. Given the fact that there is no existing and widely-used methodology of food losses assessment, it may be challenging to formulate a useful and credible methodology of APEC food losses assessment to fully take different APEC economies into consideration. To lower this risk, this project intends to actively seek assistances from each APEC economy by requesting relevant data and information, a list of experts and scholars, and opinions and comments on any preliminary output produced in this project.

Monitoring and Evaluation

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Monitoring: The Project Overseer (PO) will play a major role in monitoring the project. To ensure the progress of the project meeting its targets, the task force of the project will propose an annual work plan in the beginning of each year for the Project Overseer’s (PO) examination. After the PO’s approval, the task force will be responsible for implementation. At the end of each year, the task force will conduct a yearly progress report and submit to the PO and FPN for review and comments. For maintaining the relevance of the project to APEC and fora priorities, this project aims to regularly collect feedbacks from all APEC economies, relevant APEC fora, and stakeholders, on a quarterly basis, for the PO’s reference. Moreover, this project will timely circulate relevant outputs and progress reports among relevant stakeholders, APEC economies, and APEC fora via APIP website and E-newsletters. Besides, this project will form a monitoring committee for project monitoring and assessment, which members will come from FPN. The committee will track the progress of the project on a seasonal basis and be responsible for offering comments on the project.

Evaluation: The project will design a list of key performance indicators (KPI) as a basis to trace and evaluate the performance of the project. Since the KPI is designed to reflect the goals of the project and to measure the implementation of the project, it will consist of the following sections: (1) concrete project outputs, including the amounts of policy recommendations, action plans, research reports, methodologies, seminars and workshops, scope and coverage of toolkit and dataset, best practices, E-newsletters, etc., (2) disseminations and implementation of the project, such as total number of seminar/workshop participants, the frequency of this subject mentioned in APEC meetings and fora, the amount of survey respondents and the applications of the project outputs (e.g. best practice, toolkit, and dataset), amount of E-newsletters subscription, etc., and (3) effectiveness of the project, including the amount of positive feedback from related stakeholders in APEC economies, the number of successful cases reported by utilizing the project outputs, etc. The evaluation will be conducted by the PO and some members of FPN based on the information provided by the task force to fulfill the requirements of the KPI on an annual basis. The project evaluation will be submitted to APEC Secretariat.

Linkages

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This project will have a close collaboration with various APEC fora, mainly including ATCWG, PPFS, and ABAC. These fora will be involved in every stage of the project planning and implementation via the following approaches: (1) the project proposal and workplan will be fully circulated in these fora and will take their comments and suggestions into account; (2) the members of FPN will come from or be recommended by these for a; (3) these fora will provide comments on the project implementation and policy recommendations; (4) the members of these fora will be invited to participate in all activities of this project, including as trainers in workshops/training programs.      

All of these fora will share significant benefits from this project for following points: (1) this project aims to make constructive contribution to achieving the goals of ATCWG, specifically regarding its objectives of improving agricultural productivity and capacity through agricultural technical cooperation between APEC members, and responding to food security challenges, charged by APEC Leaders; (2) this project is designed to achieve numerous priorities of PPFS indicated in its first meeting in 2012, including post-harvest losses, food quality and safety, food waste, etc.; (3) this project will fulfill APEC leaders’ promise on enhancing APEC food security. With promotion of advanced technologies and better food managements along the food supply chain, this project will reduce food losses and improve food quality and safety in the APEC region, so as to contribute to safeguarding food security in the APEC region.

·        Non-APEC stakeholders: What role will external stakeholders play in the planning and implementation of the project? How will they share in the benefits?

Non-APEC stakeholders from both public and private sectors, such as AVRDC-The World Vegetable Center, International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Save Food, Food and Fertilizer Technology Center (FFTC) for the Asian and Pacific Region, etc. will be involved in the formation and participation of seminars and workshops/training programs in accordance with APEC’s non-member participation guidelines. Private sectors, such as Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA), will be invited to share their successful stories in reduction of food losses and costs. Relevant research institutes or centers, such as International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), WorldFish, International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), and International Union of Food Science and Technology (IUFoST), can help recommend experts/trainers, share information, and offer timely suggestions.


The above non-APEC stakeholders will share benefits in the following ways: (1) to gain from the project findings and outputs, which is beneficial to their ongoing work; (2) to further disseminate and promote their techniques, know-how, ideas, etc., to broader audience; and (3) to magnify their policy influences on APEC economies on food loss policies.

·        Previous work: How does this project build on, rather than duplicate, previous or ongoing initiatives in APEC or other organizations? This project builds on the findings of previous projects and further explores the new frontier. Distinguished from the preceding projects concentrating on the application of new technologies to improve and harmonize training standards in post-harvest quality of fruit and vegetables (ATCWG 02/2007, ATC 02/2008A), the said project expands the focus on crops (i.e., rice, wheat, corn) and other food. In addition to augmenting the findings of previous projects focusing on postharvest technologies for enhancing quality management of food quality and safety (ATC 03/2008Arev2, ATC02/2004), the project aims to promote the role of public-private partnership in reducing post-harvest losses along the entire food supply chain, including crop harvesting, handling, packaging, storage, processing, transport, marketing, food preparation to the dining table, by introducing best practices from private sector and government’s policy guidance in reducing food losses.

·        APEC’s comparative advantage: Why is APEC the best sources of fund for this project?

As outlined above, APEC is the best and most appropriate source for funding this project, since this project is meticulously designed to support APEC’s priorities. Specifically, this project is to:


§  Directly support the APEC Leaders’ Growth Strategy, particularly with regard to sustainable growth and secure growth on food security and food safety;

§  Emphasize capacity-building activities for developing APEC economies on reducing food losses;

§  Promote wide-spectrum cooperation between APEC fora and APEC economies;

§  Reinforce the principle of public-private partnership by intensively collaborating with private sector; and


Contribute to food supply chain connectivity, food trade, and agricultural investment facilitation, so as to achieve the ultimate goal of sustainable APEC food system by 2020.

Project Management

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§  The project management: The Project Overseer (PO) is in charge of the overall project management, with assistance of Focal Point Network (FPN). The project implementation, including relevant seminars, workshops, report-writing, etc., will be carried out by the task force of the project. §  The supervision arrangement: The PO plays a major role in overseeing the project implementation. Since the task force will submit a yearly progress report to the PO for examination, comments, and future directions, the PO is in the primary position to supervise the progress of the project. Besides, the monitoring committee of the project will be the second line of supervision to track the progress of the project on a seasonal basis. §  Responsibilities of co-sponsors and related APEC fora: all co-sponsors of the project and related APEC fora, on a voluntary basis, are expected to make constructive contribution to the project, including providing related data and information, recommending appropriate speakers and trainers, suggesting relevant best practices from public and private sectors, and offering timely comments and suggestions to the project. Additionally, this project is designed to be closely aligned with and cooperated with related APEC fora. Hence, related APEC fora are anticipated to provide timely information and valuable suggestions to the project.      Mechanism of the project stability: this project will be led by a group of the Project Overseers in order to ensure the project stability. Hence, any change of one Project Overseer will not disrupt the continuation and stability of the project.

Sustainability

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Given that this project is expected to make substantial contribution to food security, which is the key to achieving the goals of APEC Growth Strategies, priorities and important tasks of APEC fora, the project is expected to have profound and long-term impact on related APEC fora and APEC as a whole, even after the completion of the project. Specifically, ATCWG, PPFS, and ABAC are most likely to continuously carry out possible sustainability initiatives.

§  The final project of the project (2017) will work on the follow-up policy recommendations and strategies as the backbone to provide a general guideline for stakeholders and beneficiaries to continuously carry forward the results and lessons from the project after its completion.

§  The outputs of the project, such as the methodology of food losses assessment, toolkit and dataset on reducing food losses, are designed for long-term prospects of APEC food security. Based on these establishments, APEC economies can further utilize these outputs to develop their methods of food loss assessment, reducing their food losses, improving related technologies in food supply chain, etc. All these project outputs will provide solid support for stakeholders and beneficiaries continuing to reduce food losses along the entire food supply chain in the long run even after the closure of the project. The possible next steps in the future are likely to continue utilizing and facilitating the applications and implementation of the aforementioned project outputs, like methodology, toolkit and dataset, and to monitor and trace the performance of each solution on specific food loss issue in details, in order to select the best and widely-applicable practices for addressing food loss in APEC region, which will help build the credibility of the project outputs, so as to maximize positive influences of the project and strengthen APEC food security.

Direct Labour

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As detailed in the Excel spreadsheet of this project, APEC Funds are exclusively used in speakers’ honorarium, per diem of speakers, experts, and researchers, and active participants from travel-eligible economies. Hence, this project does not require APEC-funded position.  

Are there any supporting document attached?

No
Project No.
Project Title
Project Status
Fund Account
Sub-fund
Project Year
Project Session
Sponsoring Forum
Topics
Committee
Other Fora Involved
Other Non-APEC Stakeholders Involved
Proposing Economy(ies)
Co-Sponsoring Economies
Expected Start Date
Expected Completion Date
APEC Funding
Co-funding Amount
Co-funding Percentage
Total Project Value
Project Proponent Name 1
Job Title 1
Organization 1
Telephone 1
Email 1
Project Proponent Name 2
Job Title 2
Organization 2
Telephone 2
Email 2
Declaration
Project Summary
Relevance
Objectives
Multi-Year Approach
Beneficiaries and Outputs
Dissemination
Gender
Work Plan
Risks
Monitoring and Evaluation
Linkages
Project Management
Sustainability
Direct Labour
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Content Type: MYP Proposal
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