With nearly 620 exhibitors and 22,800 professional visitors annually in Angers, SIVAL is the only trade show in France to present a comprehensive and impressive offering of equipment and services for all plant productions.
During SIVAL 2018, the French partners of the Food Heroes project: AC3A, Regional Chamber of Agriculture of Pays de la Loire, Laval Mayenne Technopole, as well as Technopole Quimper-Cornouaille, worked together end of January focusing on three main themes:
- Forum: Unsold /unsellable – solutions in Pays de la Loire for fruit and vegetables
- Exchange/discussion: Processing food waste through four major themes: design, the digital, value chains for food waste, high added value of by-products
- Co-creation session behind closed doors: How can we use vegetables originating from production surplus and off-size/quality vegetables to reduce food waste?
1. Unsold /unsellable – solutions in Pays de la Loire for fruit and vegetables
Presentation material used during SIVAL 2018 is available here.
Pays de la Loire is a region characterised by market gardening, where 237 000 tonnes of apples and 800 000 tonnes of tomatoes are harvested per year. Correspondingly, the French Agency for the Environment and Energy Management (ADEME) estimates that apple waste post-harvest reaches 4% and post-sorting reaches 10%. In case of tomatoes, it is 4% post-harvest and 1% is refused by distributors.
Different techniques are implemented from one farm to another, hence quantification and periodicity of food waste remain an obstacle to favouring added value food processing sectors rather than composting, grinding on-site, decomposing through anaerobic digestion or producing animal feed.
There are nonetheless quite a few good practices spread throughout the region:
– Solaal is a national association of general interest, assisting in creating links between food donors and agricultural sector/food assistance associations. A regional branch of this association exists in Pays de la Loire.
– Le Jardin de Cocagne Angevin is one of the partners of Solaal. In order to reduce food waste, this organisation favours gleaning or sweeping, which means replacing farmers on-site in collecting fruit or vegetables lying on the ground or left on the plants during harvest. Another good practice promoted by this organisation is recovery of unsold stock at wholesale trading centres and production and distribution food packages.
– ValOrise is specialised in fruit and vegetable processing. This organisation plants to implement a territorial high added value food processing project, recompensing the unsold stock and rejected stock. According to Peggy Peralta, the CEO, food waste in Saumur territory where the business is based, match the estimates of ADEME. We are thus conscious of high amounts of biomass that can be introduced in value chains in Pays de la Loire. The objective of ValOrise is 50 tonnes per year, which equals to 50 000 jars of processed fruit and vegetables.
2. Valorisation des pertes alimentaires : échanges et débat
Presentation material used during SIVAL 2018 is available here.
During this discussion, four major themes were evoked:
Design
Benoît Millet, director of Design Lab – new alimentary practices of the Nantes Atlantique Design School.
Design techniques can bring about new ways and solutions to reduce food waste. For example, ugly fruit wrapped or otherwise decorated in a visually attractive manner turn out to gain approval and interest of the buyer. The only requirement is to regularly come up with new design of thereof.
Value chains for food waste
Stéphanie Bourne, Delphine Nanni & Marilyne Sanquer, l’atelier de l’épicerie.
L’atelier de l’épicerie is an organisation proposing a variety of products processed from surplus production or from rejected stocks. Their activities take place in close collaboration with actors specialised in biology for various purposes: inventing recipes, sanitary follow-up, conservation and commercialization of alimentary products. The objective is to produce tinned food. Research implemented is dynamic, local, collaborative, and intelligent.
The digital
Guy, mon petit producteur, Too Good To Go
Too Good To Go is an online tool allowing the sellers (also direct sellers like farmers) to sell their unsold products at a lower, attractive price. The popularity and simplicity of this online application allowed a market farmer, Guy from the department of Loire Atlantique, to avoid waste equivalent to almost 5 tonnes of food in 2017.
Franck Marchand, PHENIX
PHENIX and their activities are equivalent to 100 000 meals saved every day. The PHENIX Lab is an association assisting in the development of local projects focusing on food waste. In Brittany, this means for example the creation of an enterprise NoFilter, that will launch their production of organic fruit juice from unsold stocks.
High value added of by-products
Apple and grape marc or distillers grains are oftentimes considered as by-products. Driss Elothmani, teacher-researcher ESA explains how those by-products can become super-products. Key factors for the success involve:
– Throughout field and deposit analysis
– Local actors
– Study to determine the most optimal process and possible opportunities (processing into food products for human consumption, animal feed, cosmetics, biodegradable materials)
3. Séance de créativité sur les pertes alimentaires
French partners of the Food Heroes project in collaboration with Océane cooperative, have implemented a co-creation session to find solutions to food from surplus production and rejected stocks of Océane cooperative.
Here you can find the Idea Book from this session, produced by Charlotte Duval from Laval Mayenne Technopole.
The themes that met with great interest were as follows:
– Being off-the-charts means being free! (Etre hors calibre c’est être libre !) Organise a communications campaign
– Chefs in the greenhouse (Les chefs sous la serre) Gain complicity of renowned chefs for communication purposes
– Patatouille (patate [fr] = potato [en]) Create an animated movie similar to the Ratatouille movie
– All together (Tous ensemble) Oblige industrial distributors to accept ugly fruits for example
– Me, a small farmer… (Moi maraicher …) Enhance the image of food producers
– Veg’Innov (Legum’Innov) Innovation for food processing
– Végétéo Weather application for vegetables. Alert system for production peaks.
Follow the Food Heroes project via its website, Instagram and Twitter. For more information on the project, consult our website and our other articles.
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