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Wastage and post-harvest losses in food value chains are becoming increasingly debated and policies are being increasingly designed to reduce food wastages. Despite its presumed importance, there is large variation in the importance and type of food losses and wastage. We identify the levels of food wastage at various levels of the potato food chain for three Asian countries.

Surveys were fielded to better measure the important variation between value chain agents, to capture wastage at each level, to analyze the structure of the value chain, and to evaluate wastage over the whole value chain (except for consumption). We generate data on an important staple in these countries and analyze the importance of waste in domestic rural-urban food value chains, often the most important value chain in these countries.

We find total quantities of potatoes wasted are equal to 5.2% in the harvest period and 6.4% in the off-season of all quantities that enter the value chain for Bangladesh. Even lower numbers are obtained in India (3.2% and 3.3%, respectively). These wastage levels are higher in China, possibly because of the significantly longer distances that potatoes are shipped.

The use of cold storage facilities can minimize the level of wastage in the potato distribution chain. Studies of this type of storage for other countries and commodities can identify opportunities in which adoption of cold storage can provide the greatest contributions toward the elimination of food wastage.

In The Changing Body (Cambridge University Press and NBER, 2011), we presented a series of estimates showing the number of calories available for human consumption in England and Wales at various points in time between 1700 and 1909/1913. We now seek to correct an error in our original figures and to compare the corrected figures with those published by a range of other authors. We also include new estimates showing the calorific value of meat and grains imported from Ireland. Disagreements with other authors reflect differences over a number of issues, including the amount of land under cultivation, the extraction and wastage rates for cereals and pulses and the number of animals supplying meat and dairy products. We consider recent attempts to achieve a compromise between these estimates and challenge claims that there was a dramatic reduction in either food availability or the average height of birth cohorts in the late-eighteenth century.

Slovenia lies at the crossroads of the Alpine, Mediterranean and Pannonian regions, and this variety of geographical landscapes is reflected in its diverse and rich culinary heritage. Down the centuries, the diverse culinary heritage developed as part of everyday life and the festive calendar in close correlation to whatever nature provided and to the standard of living.

In 2006 Slovenia adopted the Gastronomic Strategy of Slovenia, which includes a culinary pyramid with 24 gastronomic regions and over 360 distinct dishes with a local character. Posavje with Bizeljsko represents one of the gastronomic regions of Slovenia. The National Gastronomic Strategy lists the following dishes and wines for the Posavje Region: pofaláča, bizeljski ajdov kolač (Bizeljsko buckwheat cake), koruzna prga (corn cake), pleteno srce (plaited-dough heart), bizeljska mlinčevka (Bizeljsko flat cake tart) and white and red wine Bizeljčan. These dishes and wines represent the foundation of the distinct culinary identity of the Posavje and Bizeljsko Region.

The aim of this chapter is to define the culinary heritage of the Posavje Region and identify its special and characteristic taste. A mix of methods including qualitative research, field research, expert groups and workshops was applied to identify dishes, recipes and ingredients in everyday and festive cuisine as well as cuisine related to different jobs and tasks. A gastronomic pyramid of the Posavje Region was developed and culinary workshops were conducted to introduce regional gastronomy to tourism. Challenges identified in the project exposed the need for the establishment of local supply chains, good cooperation among stakeholders in tourism, quality assurance, branding and other issues related to local tourism and gastronomic development.

In this chapter, we explore a form of young people’s activism taking place in a central societal institution and a central forum in the lives of young people – school – that we conceptualise as ‘active equity’. We present three cases from northern Finland: reindeer herders smashing potatoes, immigrant youth requesting a key and young people lying on sofas during breaks between lessons. We suggest that these acts, in the contexts in which they took place, were an unrecognised form of social action for equity undertaken by young people. We argue that the concept of active equity helps examine the assertion of rights and claims for justice by children and young people. In each case we present, young people make visible an inequity in their contexts: the reindeer herding way of life was overlooked in school, asylum-seeking or refugee immigrants were excluded from the main school building, and non-high-performing young people were excluded from comfortable areas during lessons. These, in turn, linked to broader societal inequities in Finland, a country commonly known for its equality. In school, young people are commonly viewed through intersecting discourses of democracy and education. In both discourses, they are commonly positioned as learners rather than speakers. Through active equity, young people subtly imprint themselves on the scene of education in new ways. For this reason, their acts of active equity remain typically either unrecognised or seen as oppositional in school.

This chapter is an effort to make sense of the complexities emerging from the tension between my academic-self and activist-self in the case of my participant observation in a small community organization which I call free food store. By drawing from my experiences at the ‘free food store’, I do not only reflect on some specific moments where my multiple roles/selves clash, but also invite my readers to reimagine and build an activist academy that works along with communities to ‘change the world’. While this piece can be considered as an ongoing and intense dialogue between the activist and academic about ‘what is to be done?’ in a neoliberal world, it is also an attempt to think, write and, more importantly, act differently through embodied experiences, aspirations and imaginations.

The chapter examines the current macro-governance of agri-food in a contemporary sense, taking changes in the UK and more broadly Europe. It first outlines a recent ongoing period of what is called ‘Disruptive Governance’. This emerged in the UK, the USA and indeed Brazil after the prolonged fiscal and financial crisis which brought about economic austerity in these countries over the past two decades. This relatively new disruptive phase, has now become more engrained into wider political and institutional structures and cultures, and indeed re-enforced earlier neo-liberal rounds of political articulation. Whilst there are far wider in effects than with agri-food systems, it is having a profound effect upon the stability and security of current food and farming systems. The chapter then explores the unfolding implications for agri-food in terms of policy changes, further market concentration and further financialisation. At a regional scale, we look at how these macro governance and regulatory forces are impacting in contrasting regional contexts: the UK, Wales and rural North West England (Cheshire and Shropshire). Finally, in conclusion, we ask to what extent these conditions are indeed tempered by longer-running and alternative radical shifts in agro-food systems, and the degree to which these can become mainstreamed. What do these trends suggest for sustainable food transitions and the further application and appropriateness of regime theory and governance?

This longitudinal case study affords opportunistic infra-cross-cultural and gendered comparisons of foodways within the fourth-world Saami societies across four north-European nation-states and through two generations. The study centers on 44 years of ethnographic research in arctic Norway, among both nomadic reindeer-herding and sedentary Saami together with their nearest neighbors within and without northernmost Norway.

General ethnographic immersion, from five years in duration down to single months or weeks, since early 1972, provides qualitative and quantitative data relevant to gender and food, collected in the two local languages, and supplemented by archeological and historical records as well as literatures from contiguous areas.

Two generations ago, most families, nomadic, or settled, could remember being self-sufficient with respect to food, and to lesser extents to clothing and shelter. Women’s roles in food acquisition and preparation have expanded in recent times. Some families, given choices largely made by wives and mothers, may today have a diet comparable with that in other parts of the West.

This holistic ethnographic research continues indefinitely. Any ethnography is both enabled and limited by its investigator and by local social relations, in this case synergistic and positive.

By the close of the 20th century, Saami researchers joined others in social science, often focusing on their indigenous culture and language. These provide usually corroborating and always fascinating data for outsiders, and many anecdotal narratives illustrating these data.

This paper compares the ways in which different livestock and agricultural products are exchanged in post-socialist Mongolia. It tries to explain why some goods are more commoditised than others. The hypothesis is that when marketing or barter exchange with professional merchants entail high opportunity costs, the chosen modus will rather be gift giving or personal barter within local networks. High opportunity costs, in turn, may arise because of the importance goods have for domestic consumption, because of the transaction costs connected with their exchange, or because of a high prestige value, which is not reflected in high market prices.