By Dr. Sujayasree OJ – Post-harvest specialist, World Vegetable Center
Imagine a breakthrough that enabled farmers to produce 25% more food.
No extra land. No extra water or fertilizer. No extra seed.
It would be a remarkable achievement. Farmers would demand it. Governments would insist on it. Investors would flock to it.
It sounds too good to be true.
But we already have an opportunity on that scale: wasting fewer vegetables.
For many of us, food waste means that forgotten bag of leafy greens or the wilted lettuce at the back of the fridge.
We’ve all done it, and we can all do better.
But a huge amount of food is lost before we as consumers ever see it: damaged during harvesting, squished in storage, bruised in transport, or simply unable to reach a buyer before it deteriorates.
This is particularly true of vegetables because they are so perishable. Tomatoes soften and spoil. Okra toughens. Peppers bruise. Cucumbers shrivel. Even onions – one of my favorite crops, and capable of being stored for months – can suffer substantial losses when harvesting, curing or storage conditions are poor.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that over a quarter of fruits and vegetables are lost globally between production and retail – the highest proportion of any major food group and around three times the rate for cereals and pulses.
That’s horrifying, not just because vegetables are essential to healthy diets but because every vegetable represents an investment in land, water, seed, fertilizer and energy – as well as months of work by farmers who have also carried the risks of weather, pests, diseases and changing prices.
It’s a lot of effort to end up on nobody’s plate.
So what can we do?
We need to think much more widely about where food loss begins – and therefore where it can be prevented.
I led WorldVeg work in Odisha, India, which looked at the journey of onions from seed to market.
Onion is the most important crop there, producing around 447,000 tonnes of onions each year. But in some areas up to 40% of production is lost after harvest – before it even reaches a consumer.
It’s an eye-watering amount of onion.
Reducing these losses could mean more onions reaching markets, more food available to consumers, and better returns for farmers.
But where do you start?
Well, some of the work starts years before harvest, with plant breeding.
Onion breeders can select not only for higher yields and resilience to drought, heat, pests and diseases, but also for qualities that help vegetables retain their value after harvest. Improved varieties can combine desirable bulb size, shape and colour with traits such as good keeping quality and longer storage life qualities that can help reduce losses as onions move from farms to markets and consumers.
In Odisha, we worked with farmers to compare improved varieties and choose the right onion for the right place and season. From there, the focus moved to how the crop was grown, from establishing it successfully to managing pests and diseases.
Then came the critical period after harvest. We worked with farmers to improve curing and handling, and introduced low-cost, well-ventilated storage structures that could keep onions in better condition for longer. We also explored processing onions into products such as powder and flakes, extending their shelf life while adding value.
Farmers also pooled their harvests and built stronger links with buyers, helping more of what they grew reach the market.
The results were transformative. Not only did they produce more, a greater share of their harvest made it to market: postharvest losses fell by up to 40%, and incomes increased by around 45%.
Our work in Odisha shows there is no single solution to food loss. Instead, it reveals how a series of practical interventions, from seed to market, can add up to something much bigger.
So on this International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste, by all means spare a thought for what’s lurking at the back of the fridge – but don’t stop there. That forgotten lettuce may only be the tip of the iceberg.
Tackling Food Safety and Loss Reduction is of of six Action Areas in the WorldVeg Global Strategy 2026-2033. (Download｜Flipbook)
