The Challenge to Reduce, Recover, and Recycle Food Loss and Waste in the United States is an important component of the Research, Education, and Economics mission area effort. The National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) is committed to competitive programs that empower the Cooperative Extension System to collect and disseminate research-based information on food waste and food loss.
NIFA will address the critical issues of food waste and food loss by fully integrating these topics into the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative that supports research focused in advancing scientific knowledge related to agriculture through research, education, and extension.
NIFA will support Cooperative Extension programs and activities that develop “best practices” in the collection of materials from researchers and educators that address food waste issues, evidenced based methods in reducing waste throughout the food chain, and evaluating future needs to be addressed to reduce food waste and food loss.
NIFA will support Cooperative Extension programs and activities that add new materials on reducing, recovering, and recycling food waste and loss. These programs will be integrated into the 70 existing eXtension communities of practice as appropriate. These include Consumer Agriculture; eOrganic, Families, Food, and Fitness; Dairy Group; Beef Cattle Industry; Goats; Livestock and Poultry; Environmental; and Plant Breeding and Genomics.
NIFA will support Cooperative Extension programs that host webinars by subject matter specialists. Such programs will provide information and instruction on solving real-life problems to facilitate collaboration and coordination of efforts around the country.