Food waste and the Circular Economy:

Engaging stakeholders to identify food security

challenges in Qatar

Amir M. Sharif

Zahir Irani

Brunel Business School

Brunel University London

Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 3PH, UK

EmelAktas

Cranfield School of Management

Cranfield University

Cranfield, Bedfordshire, MK43 0AL, UK

ZeynepTopaloglu

School of Foreign Service

Georgetown University

P.O. Box 23689, Doha, Qatar

Samsul Huda

School of Science and Health

University of Western Sydney

James Ruse Dr, Parramatta NSW 2150, Australia

Extended Abstract

Globally, the supply and consumption of food as well as changing consumer demands means that there is an increasing level of food-related waste (Vaclav, 2004) per unit of food demand created (Alexandratos and Bruinsma, 2012). Coupled with a rising world-wide population, infrastructure, investment and changes to food subsidies in the agricultural sector along with the repurposing of agricultural land for non-food products such as biofuel production - food security is now seen as a major global risk (Chandrasekaran and Raghuram, 2014).This is even moreso the case for regions and countries which are heavily reliant upon food imports, such as Qatar (Ianchovichinaet al., 2012). Noting the high level of non-domestically derived and supplied food within the country, there is a significant need to reduce import dependence on food from above 90% - with a stated target for Qatar to become 40% self-sufficient by 2025 (Abrahams, 2013; Babar and Migrani, 2014; Basher et al., 2013). Whilst the production and supply of food is important, the consumption and resultant potential for wasteage remains high and has been of increasing concern for several decades, especially in affluent and rapidly-developing economies (Parfittet al., 2010). More importantly, the effective production, distribution, supply, consumption and recovery from within and across the food supply chain is a pertinent and relevant aspect of the wider circular economy and circular supply chain debate (EC, 2014; Jurgilevichet al., 2016).

Against this backdrop, this paper reports on funded research that is seeking to investigate how to mitigate and reduce food waste within Qatarthrough the development of simulation models that identify the inter-relationships involved across the production and consumption elements of the food chain in Qatar (i.e. across producers, transporters, wholesalers, retailers and government). In this context, this paper reports on workshops conducted in Qatar to identify components of the food supply chain across upstream (producer) and downstream (consumer) stakeholder groups – with a subsequent alignment of these findings to themes within the sustainability literature. Hence attempting to frame food waste and food security within the wider sustainability debate (Linton et al., 2007).

As such we report on how a participatory engagement methodology was adopted and implemented to gather data on the core research themes outlined above. Workshop participants represented by stakeholder groups were brought together to identify core factors contributing to food supply and waste scenarios. A process of group-wise prioritisation, categorisation (using a number of strategic management tools - as identified by Koivupuroet al., 2012) and pairwise comparison was then carried out to identify key factors contributing to food waste in Qatar. By carrying out a morphological analysis of the workshop data, the authors seek to present an alignment of food security and food waste findings from the research workshops, in terms of the wider context of food supply chains and the circular economy. This is achieved through a thematic categorisation against sustainability themes identified from the literature such as economic, environmental, social, operational and value maximisation aspects (Corbet, 2009; Kleindorferet al., 2005). The paper suggests that there is therefore potential for sustainable supply chain / operations management concepts to be applied to food waste research in pursuit of the Qatar national strategy.

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