 level at all stages of the food production chain. The main focus of the conference will be on strategy and collaboration among various actors to prevent and reduce food loss and waste. The program is really engaging, but before we start, let me please share with you some housekeeping rules. The conference languages are English, Russian and Turkish. Simultaneous interpretation is provided. Please select the language you wish to listen to in the interpretation menu at the bottom of the page. Please note that you are making an intervention in another language than the one you're listening to. You need to turn the interpretation off by selecting the off option in the interpretation menu. Make sure you're on mute, clicking on the unmute button only when speaking. Please keep to your allotted speaking time as our timetable is quite tight. Please use the chat to contribute during the presentations and put your questions in the Q&A box. When leaving a question in the Q&A box, please make sure to give your name and indicate who the question is addressed to. The conference will be recorded. At this stage, I would like to give the floor to Vyrel Guto, FAO sub-regional coordinator for Central Asia for the opening remarks. Mr. Guto, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Victoria. Good morning, good night and good morning. Good morning, colleagues, good morning. Distinguished guests, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, friends, I am very honored to address all of you today and let me congratulate you all on this International Day of Awareness of Food, Loss and Waste. I am also delighted to co-chair this event with our honorable partners, the Minister of Agricultural Forests of Turkey and the Regional Coordination Center for Food Security of the Economic Cooperation Organization. We call it shortly, ECO RCC. I would like to commend the continuous efforts and commitment to fight food, loss and waste in Turkey and in the region. As we all know already, food, loss and waste is an ethical problem, which shall not be tolerated. In a world with enough food to feed everyone, 690 million continue to go hungry and 3 billion cannot afford a healthy diet. Two alarming. Food, loss and waste brings with it the waste of natural resources, water, soil and energy, not to mention human labor and time. It contributes to climate change and undermines the sustainability of our food systems. In this respect, actions are required globally and locally to maximize the use of food we produce. The introduction of technologies, innovative solutions, new ways of working and good practices to manage food quality and reduce food loss and waste are key to implementing this transformative change. However, with nine years left to reach SDGs, specifically SDG Target 12.3, there is an urgent need to accelerate action to reduce food loss and waste. Coming together on this day provides a timely opportunity to reflect and take stock of existing challenges pertaining to food loss and waste in Central Asia, Azerbaijan and Turkey and to call for action to put a stop to this practice. By sharing knowledge and best practices and showcasing success stories, the conference today aims to inspire multidisciplinary solution-driven collaboration among public, private and civil society actors at national and intra-regional level. Indeed, realizing and enhancing the positive impacts of reducing food loss and waste requires good governance and all players working together in a coherent way. Policymakers shall create an enabling environment, including policy and regulatory mechanism that incentivize other players to act by reducing food loss and waste. The involvement of private sector is key to ensure the development of infrastructure and technologies, application of innovative post-harvest practices and use of novel marketing channels. Partnerships enable action across the entire supply chain rather than just targeting one area, thereby generating greater impact. The project which I want to mention now is the reduction of food loss and waste in Central Asia, Azerbaijan and Turkey that FIO is proud to implement jointly with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Turkey and in close collaboration with national stakeholders in all of the countries. And this is an example of unified approach to reducing food loss and waste. This project supports countries in the Subregion in developing and implementing national strategies and action plans to reduce food loss and waste by incorporating policy and technical aspects and targeting all sub-sectors of the food system from farmers to consumers. In Turkey specifically, FIO and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry have developed a national strategy on prevention, reduction and monitoring of food loss and waste and an action plan and also launched a national movement called Save Your Food uniting public authorities, social impact groups, major national players in the food production, retail and hospitality sectors, media and public figures in the fight against food loss and waste. This is an excellent example of action which has to be acknowledged and followed. Currently, the process of designing national strategies is also ongoing in Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. And again, the example of Turkey will be instrumental in this. But many more of such actions will be shared during the conference today. And in conclusion, I would like to urge all present here to step up the efforts and act decisively to reduce food loss and waste. It all depends on us. So let us work together to reduce food loss and waste for the benefit of our planet, people and our future generations. Let me wish you all an inspiring and fruitful event and thank you very much for your attention. Good luck with the event. Thank you very much, Mr. Guto, for your inspiring words. It is indeed time to recognize that the issue of food loss and waste is a collective responsibility and putting an end to it requires coordinated joint action. I would now like to welcome Aileen Chaleyan-Ozjan, general director of the UN Foreign Relations for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Ms. Ozjan, the floor is yours. Thank you very much. Good morning, distinguished colleagues and dear guests. I would like to thank to FAO for providing us this opportunity to celebrate the second International Day of Awareness Food Loss and Waste. It's my honor to be part of this organization today and have the floor to present our actions and save your food campaign in collaboration with FAO. We are here to focus on and take action for reducing food loss and waste as nations. We have been very adamant about these aspects. Therefore, during the Turkey's G20 presidency in 2015, we have incorporated the issue of food loss and waste in the World Agenda. Following this, we have started an initiative to establish a technical platform on the measurement of reduction of food loss and waste with FAO and the International Food Policy Research Institute. Estimed participants, as the vaccination process is moving fast, we have seen the light at the end of the tunnel for the pandemic. But we have taken a very important and unique lesson. The pandemic pointed out the importance of food security, agriculture and sustainable use of natural resources. For this reason, we have to increase our efforts to achieve SDGs. This year, for the UN Food Systems Summit, I was appointed as a national dialogue convener for Turkey. The preparations for the summit was very dynamic at that time. We had conducted many dialogues, workshops, surveys, and with the help of the UN organizations, especially including FAO. We had finalized our national pathway for UNFSS. A week earlier, on the 23rd of September, the summit had been conducted and our Honourable President had declared our pathway with his speech in front of the millions and all member states of the UN. In this speech, our Honourable President had underlined the importance of reduction of food loss and waste for a sustainable food system and how we managed our Save Your Food campaign to achieve these targets. Distinguished participants, regarding food loss and waste, I would like to share the situation in Turkey that we are doing to encounter it. Turkey wastes more than 19 million tons of food every year. This is almost one-fifth of what we produce. We look at the food loss level in Turkey, it's almost 40%. In the light of the studies, Turkey's national strategy document and its action plan was prepared, as the viewer mentioned, in order to reduce food loss and waste and disseminate our vision from national to global level, together with our long-lasting partner with FAO. This document is the perfect example of the collaborative and pluralistic approach. Moreover, under the scope of the FAO-Turkey partnership program, which is fully funded by the Turkish government, we initiated a regional project on reducing food loss and waste in Turkey and central Asia since the end of 2019 with a budget of 1.5 million US dollar. The project also covers a national campaign called Save Your Food, which we are implementing since the 20th of May, 2020. It has been almost one and a half year. This campaign could also be implemented by the beneficiary countries of the project. We aim countering food loss and waste and raising public awareness, both nationally and internationally, and disseminate the good practices at the regional level. Estimed participants, the name of our campaign is Save Your Food, Your Actions Matter. Our main message is, buy as you need, do not throw your future away. We published our action plan and got the support of all actors in the food chain. We touched half of our population with media channels. By the way, we broke a Guinness work record on most pledges received for an environmental sustainably campaign, almost 800,000 people pledged to reduce food loss and waste. Moreover, we made animation movies for children to be more careful on food waste. We published guidelines for different food chain actors as logistics, horeca, and retail. Last but not least, we had organized many workshops and events on the food banking, cooking, et cetera. We continue our efforts without stopping. Our website, gidanukoru.com, is the place where you can find the detailed information in English. And it is constantly updated and includes every type of the information from tips, from consumers to the best practices and resources. Dear participants, during this one year, we had done a pre-test and post-test to measure where we were and where we came to. Let me share the results with you. Consumers, according to the results of this test, consumers start to waste less and household saved around, when we think about the whole year, $100 million during this year. Moreover, we got 20% rise on awareness of date labeling. So consumers became more cautious about the meaning of the dates on the products. Regarding to overcooking and over-portioning, we achieved a 40% decrease and there is a 22% rise on recycling. Most attractive result is that 93% of consumers find the campaign useful and 84% are more cautious about the food waste now. Dear participants, at the end of the day, all of our efforts are to achieve the U.S. Sustainable Development Goals. I believe that international collaboration and commitment to sustainability of our national resources will create a very strong support for the SDGs and for our future. As Turkey, we are willing to share our experience and learn from the other countries to reduce it. My colleagues will present more detailed information on how we implement our strategy to reduce food loss and waste at national level and how we conducted the awareness raising campaign. Before concluding, I would like to reiterate my sincere gratitude to FAO for their very valuable partnership and efforts to bring us together. Once again, I would like to express my deep appreciation to the UN and to all partners. Since the world is given to chance to focus on this essential issue through this special day. Have a good day, have a successful workshop and thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. John. Turkey's commitment to tackle food loss and waste is truly commendable. We at FAO are delighted to have such a dedicated partner by our side and together we will increase our efforts to achieve SDGs. It is now my honor to introduce Ahmed Bolkan, Gungaran, coordinator of the Regional Coordination Center for Food Security at the Economic Cooperation Organization. Mr. Gungaran, you have the floor. Thank you so much. Esteemed FAO sub-regional coordinator for Central Asia, distinguished Director-General for EU and Foreign Relations of the Ministry of Agricultural and Forestry of Turkey, honorable representatives of eco-member countries and eco-institutions, dear colleagues. It is a great honor and pleasure to welcome you to the online conference on food loss and waste reduction in Central Asia, Azerbaijan and Turkey, jointly organized by EcoRCCFS, FAO and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Turkey. By this opportunity, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the colleagues from FAO and also from the Ministry for their efforts in organizing this important event. Distinguished participants, today we will address the current status of food loss and waste with a specific emphasis on sec and eco-region and deliberate over the approach of food loss and waste reduction in detail. A wide range of stakeholders come together to discuss this issue in various aspects. This conference also provides us a special opportunity to celebrate the international day of awareness on food loss and waste reduction. Esteemed participants, today achieving the zero hunger goal by 2030 is becoming more challenging in the face of the changing climate, a growing global population, rising food prices, environmental stressors and various other factors. The current reports emphasize that COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the food security and nutrition status and continues to expose weakness in our food systems, threatening the lives and livelihoods of people around the world, especially the most vulnerable. The pandemic develops a new dimension to the current situation of the food security and nutrition in the world. And with no doubt, the situation will deteriorate if we do not take protection. Food loss and waste at any stage of supply chains is crucial to contribute to the reduction of food insecurity. It is estimated that between the post harvest and retail states of the supply chain, up to 14% of food produced globally is lost and 17% of the total global food production is wasted at the retail food service and consumer states. This is equal to approximately $400 billion annually. With this amount, more than one billion people per year could have been fat. In the eco region, the situation is also concerning due to the high level of food loss and waste along food supply chain. However, country level data is limited in most countries of eco and the scale of food loss and waste and its impacts on food security have not been well understood. For instance, in some member states, data is available for four out of five food commodity groups while other countries of eco have data for only one or two commodity groups, mostly cereals and potatoes. Therefore, it is important to have robust and updated data on food loss and waste to prioritize the efforts to address the issue. The reduction of food loss and waste is a key topic for policy design and interventions and a global response is required to address the solve this problem. So all the players on board, including the public and private sectors together with academia, international organizations, financial institutions, producers, consumers and civil society should work collaboratively in a coordinated manner. National strategies and action plans should include more efficient regulations and measures which target the reduction of food loss and waste. Dear colleagues, as you all know, Economic Cooperation Organization, Regional Coordination Center for Food Security has been established to support efforts to ensure food security in the eco region and aims to be a hub for regional collaboration. I would like to emphasize that since its foundation, EcoRC-CFS has mobilized all its efforts on food loss and waste issue in eco region which is an inseparable aspect of food security. The capacity of EcoRC-CFS is growing day by day and I believe that the center will play a more crucial role in facilitating regional endeavors to improve food security and develop sustainable food systems with the valuable and much needed contributions of the member states. Regarding the center's latest work, I would like to inform you that we have updated the regional program for food security to identify concrete actions and to foster regional collaboration in order to ensure safe, nutritious, and affordable food for all. We will also publish the updated version of the overview of food security in the eco region soon. With the aim of improving cooperation among stakeholders and information exchange on food security, we will continue our activities with trainings, seminars, and workshops. As you all know, a valuable opportunity to achieve SDGs, the UN Food Systems Summit took place last week. In this context, as an independent dialogue for the summit, EcoRC-CFS organized a webinar on sustainable food systems and its concepts in eco region. Accordingly, with the support of UNFSS, secretariat, and UN Turkey offices, we will jointly organize a regional dialogue workshop with Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization on 18th of October, 2021. Through this workshop, we aim to increase regional stakeholder engagement from Black Sea Economic Cooperation and Eco in the process of transforming and improvement of food systems. Dear participants, today we aim to create a multi-stakeholder engagement with an integrated approach by considering the aspects of technology, economics, sociology, ecology, food security, and nutrition. I am confident that this conference will provide an enhanced perspective. And I believe we will all learn valuable information which will help us contribute more in reducing food loss and waste in our region. Thank you so much for your attention. Thank you very much, Mr. Gungaran. The issue of food loss and waste is indeed central to food security. And your efforts in this regard are commendable. We look forward to the workshop that you are going to organize in October. So now we move to our first session, which will explore key elements of a successful food loss and waste reduction strategy. Miriam Anet, international consultant for FAO on food loss and waste reduction, will provide an overview on the food loss and waste situation in the region and the approach that FAO is taking to address the problem. Miriam is going to cover the main areas of focus for governments and food business operators. Miriam, the floor is yours. Good morning, Mr. Gungaran. Let me please share my screen. Can you see my screen? Well... Good morning, everyone. I'm very happy to be here today to present the work of FAO on food loss and waste reduction in the region. As you know, food loss and waste is a significant global challenge for countries, businesses, policymakers and civil society. And FAO study estimated that about a third of all food produced globally for human consumption is lost or wasted, which equates to about 1.3 billion tons of food. Food is thrown at each segment of the food supply chain before or when it gets damaged for multiple reasons. Inadequate infrastructure, lack of transportation and logistic systems, lack of knowledge, poor food safety, hygiene and handling practices, overproduction, negligence, consumer demand and preference, etc. Food loss is what is food loss and what is food waste? Food loss is the reduction of quantity and quality of food, mainly caused by the malfunctioning of the food production and supply systems and weaknesses in the institutional and legal framework. Food loss is the crop, livestock, fish, edible commodities that exit the post-harvest slaughter catch supply chains up to and excluding the retail level, you can see in the graph on the slide. Food waste in green refers to the removal from the food supply chain of food, which is fit for human consumption by choice or which has spoiled or expired, mainly caused by economic or social behavior, poor stock management or neglect. Food waste occurs at retail from the retail to the final consumption stages. In this presentation, the abbreviation of food loss and waste is used to cover food losses and food waste at all stages and as was said before, food loss and waste occurs at any stage of the food supply chain. As you probably already know, the target 12.3 calls for halving food waste at retail and customer levels by 2013 and reducing food loss along production and supply chains. Progress towards SDG 12.3 is measured by indicator 12.3.1, which has been split into two sub-indicators, the food loss index and the food waste index. These two sub-indicators are under the custodianship of the UN agencies, the FAO and UNEP, the United Nations Environment Program. FAO is leading the work on the food loss index and UNEP on the food waste index, given the respective expertise and mandates in these areas. The work of these agencies aims to provide the global community with solid estimates of both food losses and food waste, which I present here on this slide. FAO's food loss index has led to the first global estimate released in 2019 that about 14% of food is lost from the farm up to but excluding the retail stage and UNEP estimated that about 17% of food production is wasted. This graph is presented in the SOFA Report 2019, the State of Food and Agriculture Report from FAO. The percentage of food loss refers to the physical quantity lost for different commodities divided by the amount produced. We can see, for example, that at the regional level, estimates range from 5-6% in Australia and New Zealand to 20-21% in Central and Southern Asia. At each stage of the food supply chain, targeted measures, targeted measures to reduce food loss and waste can be implemented by its actors, working in close collaboration with each other. Solving food loss and waste requires a systems approach that addresses the causes of food loss and waste from farm to fork to landfill. And the country's food systems are complex and reducing food loss and waste requires strong collaboration between value chain actors to better identify, measure, understand and find solutions to the problem. Under the umbrella of the Global Safe Food Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction, FAO is implementing a comprehensive program on food loss and waste reduction in Europe and Central Asia. To this end, FAO supports countries in non-EU Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans, the Caucasus, Turkey and Central Asia in the areas of action presented on this slide. So you can see six points, priorities of work. The national strategies on food loss and waste prevention and reduction favor that we support countries to implement favor a circular value chain approach and under this approach the priority is to prevent food loss and waste first, then to rescue and recover food before it gets wasted and finally to recycle it for non-food uses in order to minimize any waste of resources invested in food production. This graph is for the Food Waste Management hierarchy or the Food Use Not Loss hierarchy as well in some publications. We would also like to refer to the recently adopted FAO Voluntary Code of Conduct for Food Loss and Waste Reduction which provides a solid basis for our recommendations. The Code of Conduct presents the actions and measures that relevant stakeholders should take or put in place in order to contribute food loss and waste reduction and the COC also presents the role that FAO and other stakeholders will be expected to play in supporting its implementation. The project under which this conference is organized aims to assist recipient countries Turkey, Azerbaijan and Central Asian countries in developing national strategies and action plans on food loss and waste reduction that are aligned with national policies in context and which are based on the food loss management hierarchy as well as to implement the key strategic actions of these strategies both at the policy and technical levels. You can see on this slide the different outputs, different areas of action that this project is developing and implementing. The key elements of a successful strategy for food loss and waste reduction address the complex problem of food loss and waste. Its causes and impacts and they are indicated here on the right side. These are the key elements of national strategies for food loss and waste reduction. They are complementary and one element is no more important than another. I go a bit fast because I only have 10 minutes so of course ask me questions in the Q&A box later. We work with actors at national and local levels to address policy and technical issues. Countries must act in the areas listed here on the left side and we are implementing activities to develop their capacities in these areas. You can see. We also work and develop partnerships with a wide variety of local actors. This is the box on the left side on the right side sorry and this is where we stand today in the countries of Central Asia. Field work is carried out in selected value chains to collect data and information on food loss and waste on drivers, causes and impacts. National legislation and policies relating to the prevention and management of food loss and waste are also analyzed and this work will be presented in detail by the national consultants after my presentation and the work in Turkey will of course be presented as well in more detail after my presentation. Also I would like to inform you that training will be provided in October and November on FAO food loss index methodology for Turkey and Central Asian countries. Finally this last slide recalls the importance of national legislation and food loss and waste reduction when analyzing national legislation and policies relevant to food loss and waste. We want to know if food loss and or waste is identified as a key way stream to target to what extent do legal texts and policies define frame with the requirements for food loss and waste management action what is allowed what is prohibited in the legal framework. We also want to know if how the following key elements are defined waste food is food, biodegradable waste byproducts food losses food waste and the analysis will then tell us if there is a legal basis for the disposal of food and the secondary use of food waste whether there are gaps if the current framework favors or on the contrary prevents innovative action on food loss and waste management and at the end of the analysis we will make specific recommendation on the adoption or revision of national legislation for reviewing existing strategy policy documents or developing new policies, etc. This work is currently ongoing in the countries of the project. It has been finalized in Uzbekistan it has been finalized almost nothing by John the national consultant will be pleased to present this work to you just after my presentation. Finally on this last slide and you will have access to all these documents because the presentations will be shared you can see here the links to a few resources that are that FAO that FAO has produced in the right side the images are its educational packages for students and teachers at schools don't hesitate to thank you very much don't hesitate to ask me any questions thank you. Thank you Miriam for this very interesting presentation and as you point out a holistic systems approach and a strong collaboration between actors are key to finding practical solutions to food loss and waste. Now we will give the floor to our next speaker Mr. Zeynep Oskan who is the head of European Union harmonization department and the ministry of agriculture and forestry of Turkey and she's coordinating the national food the savior food campaign on the part of the ministry she will present the strategy and action plan for food loss and waste prevention and reduction in Turkey which is currently being jointly implemented with the FAO. Mr. Oskan please go ahead. Thank you very much Victoria thank you. Good morning everyone good morning dear colleagues dear participants now I will share my screen and start my presentation on how we implement this very important campaign esteemed participants before beginning my presentation I would like to express my sincere gratitude to be a part of this important conference. I'm sure that as a result of this conference we will learn a lot from each other to cope with food loss and waste problem not only in our countries but also in our region. Today with my presentation I will give information of Turkish national food loss and waste prevention strategy and how we are implementing it. Savior food campaign sets a great example of partnership and collaboration among public, international organization and civil society. We are jointly running the campaign together with the FAO and launched it on 28th of May 2020. Savior food's main objective is to reduce food loss and waste in Turkey and become a global role model today in my presentation I will mention briefly the preparation for the phase of the national strategy and action plan, how we implemented what the avatar results so far and what is ahead. So what the official numbers say on food loss and waste in Turkey according to national inventory report in 2019 we wasted 19.1 million tons of food which equals to more than 20% of food which we produce, which Turkey produce this amount takes 235,000 of garbage trucks to dispose which brought us to find efficient and sustainable solutions to reduce it. So what we had done to cope with this problem first we established a working group from different departments of our ministry our deputy DG was the main coordinator in the morning session he delivered a speech Mr. Volkan he was the main coordinator of this working group so decision making process was very smooth so once you have a leader which one can take decisions then the working group can work really efficiently we believe that while working on a strategic document and action plan it was important to design it as a campaign because raising awareness was the most important part to reduce food loss and waste in Turkey we believe that in order to cope with food loss and waste problem as I mentioned raising awareness had a tremendous importance to raise awareness social media is a really great tool so we obtain campaign social media accounts which are free as you know and reserve them for the launch of the campaign afterwards we prepared field survey questions to be sent to our provincial directorates Turkey has 81 cities and each city has their own provincial directorate for our ministry they are our colleagues who work on field going to inspections talking to farmers food processors service sector etc so they implemented the survey and we organized a workshop in Ankara inviting all of our colleagues and gathered the results of the food loss and waste survey this created a very important pathway to cope with Turkey's food loss and waste problem the feedback we received from our field colleagues was very important but in order to follow a holistic approach one should listen other actors academia, private sector and NGOs that is when we decided to organize a half day workshop with important representatives of these actors one panel was with the perspective of private sector and the other was NGO so we took notes to shape our action plan and while doing that it was a part of FAO TCP project zero waste zero hunger in 2018 which was implemented in 2018 so we did all this together hand by hand with the ministry and FAO and as we gathered information from food chain actors that was the time for us to design the campaign together with FAO our top priority was to establish a common sense and build partnership from civil society to academia and private sector it took us more than one year as a result the layout of food loss and waste in Turkey was food loss and waste is most seen in fruits and vegetables followed by catering and bread and the highest rate of loss in fresh fruits and vegetables is seen in the stages before consumption in catering it is the highest in mass consumption places such as hospitals cafeterias hotels and restaurants and bread is wasted especially during the sales phase the process in the food supply chain need to be improved and consumers food literacy especially about date marking needs to be improved distinguished participants taken into consideration of all the daytime mentioned together with FAO we had prepared the national strategy in a section plan on food loss on waste for the very first time before that we had analyzed other food loss on waste strategies of other countries including United States, Refad, UK, RAP Canada, New Zealand, etc we had designed the strategy according to the food use not loss or waste hierarchy which is the reverse pyramid as you can see on the screen and defined almost a hundred of actions with responsible and partner institutions you can download the English version of the strategy from gidanikori.com and FAO website for the first phase as we run a communication campaign we focused on raising awareness we created a very big movement with the involvement of every sector in the food chain following a common sense and valiant partnership we want our success to set an example to other countries so this is our strategic plan strategic guide and action plan strategic document it has a background information in it a concept for food loss on waste goals and targets which defines also the responsible institutions which I stated as players and partners and partners and the name of our campaign is save your food, your actions matter and our main messages by as you need do not throw your future away target audience is every age group and everyone in the food chain and we had reached millions almost half of the population of Turkey by digital and social media they build partnerships with union of municipalities, food business operators and our website is constantly updated with every type of information from tips for consumers to best practices and resources more raising awareness information will be given by Ruslan in the later sessions and the need for raising awareness in food loss on waste reduction section of the conference now let's go back to how we implemented our action plan with different actors here in this slide you see a kind of a brochure which is what's on the menu for municipalities together with FAO we had built a partnership with union of municipalities I especially wanted to mention the importance of municipalities as they play a great role in circular economy from production to waste management one third of our actions almost 33 of actions in our action plan relies on partnership with municipalities from cleaning food banking to recycling we organize meetings workshop events and contests together with union of municipalities they have great influence on municipalities and they become the driving force to cope with food loss on waste problem the union of municipalities as you might guess of course is the roof organization for the municipalities because they have food markets all the municipalities have food markets food banks, agriculture production cooperatives and so on partners such as municipalities plays a very important role for success also they are the owner of billboards video screens in public places for raising awareness their support to our companies visual items was crucial to reach public and also other partnerships government to government minister to ministry especially on legislation on cross cutting issues such as food bank or trade and the we built partnerships on the screen you see our mascot Jano on the left side our minister minister for agriculture and forestry and on the right side minister of national education so we had bring them together on the stage to make a informative and joyful video production for children and moreover here in this slide I don't mention how we collaborate with retailers in Turkey the green yellow poster which you see on the screen which says 50% discount for ripened fresh roots and vegetables so migros maybe you have one in your country is one of the biggest retailer in Turkey like carpore or other retailers they are selling the discounted ripened fresh roots and vegetables with almost up to 50% price and also on the right side you see another discount another store local supermarket chain which is Yunus market which sells which uses the same kind of visual and also another one is at one of the cafes in Ankara which has our poster and the other one is the guideline to reduce food waste in hotels restaurants and cafes and I mentioned the collaboration ministry to ministry for food banking we hold many workshops and we had many discussions to improve food banking in Turkey and for children's education I mentioned ministry of nation education and for raising awareness so collaboration with every partner including other ministries is crucial if you want to be successful in food loss and waste production furthermore universities, academicians we are always in touch with every workshop and event we always invite them we make them we also make them attend as panelists or moderators etc and we try to benefit as much as we can from their knowledge and now I would like to inform you on one of the most important expected outcome of the campaign the national platform on food loss and waste which we are going to build together with EPEO this will be a long lasting web based platform which brings the representatives of public, private sector, academia and civil sector civil society organizations because running a campaign is really time consuming so whenever this campaign ends or slows down the actions for reducing food loss and waste needs to continue and by building this platform by making discussions going, partnerships going we believe this platform plays a really crucial role esteemed participants now I came to the end of my presentation I hope I haven't take so much of your time before ending my verse I would like to underline once more the importance and value of collaboration to succeed in preventing food loss on waste I would like to thank EPEO colleagues for their great support as always since 2018 but also it dates back to many, many years ago so thank you very much for listening to me and if we have any questions I will be happy to answer thank you very much over to you Victoria Thank you very much Zeynep for this informative and inspiring presentation I'm sure that the example of Turkey inspiring for other countries in particular for Central Asia as you know, EPEO is working closely with national stakeholders in Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to support the development of national strategies in these countries that being said please don't forget to share your questions with our speakers in the Q&A box they will be eager to respond to all of your questions and share more information with you so here today we're joined by national teams who will speak about the related challenges and possible solutions as regards food loss and waste based on the analysis of key food value chains in the existing policy and legislative frameworks with us is Parviz Aliyev national consultant on value chain and globally important agricultural heritage systems and Rashid Mamada national legal consultant they will provide an overview of the situation in Azerbaijan ok, I welcome everyone let me just share my screen ok the food was in waste in Azerbaijan here I will cover the key issues and recommendations on food loss and waste reduction here in our country firstly I want to give some information about the project implementing here is the name of the project in reduction of food loss and waste in the second countries the project includes food loss and waste reduction in the context of national food system and climate change so here the project will cover the comprehensive program that will contribute to the prevention and reduction of food loss and waste in the country it also assists the country to develop national strategy action plan and legislation for reducing FLW and eventually will enable the effective implementation regarding that food loss and waste regarding the communication awareness ways and activities in the country now the implementation stated in the project we firstly evaluated the availability of information of food loss and waste here and also the existing initiatives for reducing food loss and waste at national local levels then an inception mission and interviews were conducted around national stakeholders that were identified in the framework of the project then we conducted a survey and also the test research and identified key value chains for the survey for the analysis and afterwards three field missions carried out in the region and also in the region and also the food loss and waste issues and selected value chains were identified the only value chain which is left is the bread value chain it will be conducted in the upcoming days and also I want to mention some relevant projects implementing in the country this includes strengthening the competitiveness of agriculture project it is planning to build a value chain based on the principle from field to table and on-interactive producer processors and similar relationships then the next is the development of the shoot value chain in Azerbaijan resource efficient and cleaner production food bank and also the management of natural resources and protection of ecosystem services for sustainable rural development in the South Caucasus there are other projects also relevant projects implemented in Azerbaijan these are the main ones now I want to give some information about the food waste in Azerbaijan according to the food waste index report 2021 there are 93 kilograms of food waste per capita in households in Azerbaijan in most part of the country waste is collected and transported without any group the population of Azerbaijan usually provides food in large quantities and unused food is thrown away I just want to mention these are the main problems of food waste food loss problems will come after in other words food waste is mostly a job at weighting and funeral it's very large part when labeling food products in the country according to the characteristics of the product the term recommended consumption date and the expiration date are not distinguished this is one of the problems weighting is typical the next is food loss that we control over the use of food by different pesticides so we have recommended that we control over the waste those on the food and also the residues on the food products also the problem with the supply of food waste is a major problem in Azerbaijan also in the agriculture during the interviews we found that the majority of the farmers producers are complaining about this problem following their identity and adverse weather conditions and also the irrigation where is the irrigation problem is the what happens after the climate problems insufficient storage capacity and weak practices then weak agro processing power this is the main strategy of the country we are trying to build and processing capacity here in Azerbaijan also most of the traditional agricultural practices and other was on food system is the extended informal food system so the majority of farmers are just self learners insufficient knowledge and technical support to farmers this is about extension services we have the extension services but the network is limited and weak insufficient post harvest handling facilities is also the problem low bargaining power for small producers we need farmers to get together through corporations but the process is weak here also we created the department the cooperation department at the Ministry of Agriculture newly created in 2018 and we are trying the farmers to get together to work together inefficient planning of production so we have different problems with this so farmers when the prices are high they plan to they start to grow crops but the next year the prices go down this is the common problem limited market opportunities for agro food products and so the dependence on the Russian market for agro food exports which means that we need to enhance the expert market ok here we see the regions that I have visited this is the the only region is left is Baku itself which will be conducted on bread value chain and I also want to name the criteria of the selected value chains these are important in terms of size of production national food security, number of small holders, economic potential product with the potential to become high value added the restate that these criteria are based when I selected when we selected the value chains for analysis so the overalls bread, potato onion, tomato and apple ok now I want to introduce to you the main food loss and waste related issues on selected value chains firstly for potato and onion one of the main reasons for food loss in the country is the fall in price due to overproduction and the loss of economic interest in selling the product this is the very widespread problem and for apple and tomato farmers who cannot find buyers for their crops during the season sometimes due to closed borders with Russia and sometimes due to extremely low prices often dumped they are producing into the river beds or elsewhere this is the common scenery here in the season and the next bread this is the result of the research the price of bread is deliberately kept low by the state for food security reasons for this reason the population buys more bread and the unused part is turned into waste bread markets will require producers to fill their shop stalls completely producers are also forced to send more bread to the market than actually required by consumers and also bread is returned to the producer and turned into waste and the third one the bread producers are sometimes administratively forced to sell bread at low prices which leads the producer lowers the quality of bread in order not to lose profits then poor quality bread quickly spoils and turns into waste and for last gender issues and use involvement problems the majority of tomato growers in the region are men this includes landowners and business organizers in this process men are mainly engaged in organizational work such as supplying the necessary production resources negotiations and potential buyers of the product however women are closely involved in many agro technical services related to tomato cultivation this covers the tomato value chain this is the same with potato and onion mainly women are able to conduct irrigation breeding harvesting activities the biggest difference is in driving almost all agricultural vehicles in the region are driven by men this includes tractors, sprayers, trucks etc the vast majority of intermediaries purchased and produced from the farmers are men in return the majority of tomatoes sold in the regional markets are made by women overall there is not a problem to conduct to carry out the activities regarding agriculture but the percentages are like this as farmers involve the whole family in tomato production young people also contribute to this work child labor is not used in the cultivation of tomatoes young people share almost the same work with men and women boys are more involved in tomato growing than girls in agricultural activities the average age of farmers is between 50 and 55 and also we identified recommendations on these issues small farmers can get preferential or soft loans for the installation of modern irrigation system we place this in the first place because this is a major problem for agriculture farmers to store their products in cold storages during the season active awareness raising campaigns should be conducted and the other hand on the other hand the capacity of the existing cold storage network should be brought to a level that can meet local production farmers should be regularly educated on the cultivation of fruits and vegetables as well as the use of modern methods for this purpose and the network of extension services should be expanded the sound legal framework should be created for the formation of cooperatives and farmers as I stated earlier and associations in the field of production and sale of agricultural products and farmers should be encouraged to unite in such cooperatives and associations also we have approximately 15 associations but mainly engaged in the organization work not in the production or sale of products more effective market and price regulation system should be established farmers should be supported to reach global quality standards for good agricultural practices this is very important in terms of exporting agricultural products to the European Union markets farmers production planning and business modeling skills should be developed they have to be a business or entrepreneurs not just growers investment in well equipped laboratories for specific analysis should be promoted and supported this is put there because in some part farmers are unable to export to the European Union because they don't know how many pesticide residues in their crops are so they need to have some knowledge and also the precise information about this so we need these well equipped laboratories here for small holders to access loans and other financial services enabling environment should be created this is also the problem and thank you for your attention thank you parties thank you shall we go on to our next speaker Arashid is not joining us today yes here okay Arashid are you presenting as well yes okay well thank you thank you very much Fikora and in my turn I also thank everybody for their times to attending this conference and also to old colleagues prior to me that they have already made presentation and also which will do after me I will now share my screen as well I think everybody sees it now so I will start with the general information but however my colleagues prior to me most of them have already mentioned many things that I also want to note on my presentation and thanks to Miriam and as well Parviz they're also covered certain issues I will start with the project background that shortly that what are our aims within this process and what's the main objectives for the project regarding Azerbaijan so under the project the objective for countries to minimize the levels of the food loss and the waste and also to improve the options for recovery redistribution as well recycling the food loss and the waste and in order to do this establishing also a favorable regulatory and policy framework in this way we are relying on the certain analysis of the legislation and also institutional frameworks and as well the results of other activities that we have within the project and also some range of other measures and if I would go through the main definitions that we try to cover in this concept I would specifically note that the law of Azerbaijan Republic on food stuffs it's called so that defines food stuffs as product raw materials eating products and some additives or ingredients products that are included in the group of taste products and this definition is compatible with the definition provided by the FAO however there are also some gaps and also some which we encounter within our analysis I would not go deeper in the definitions of food loss and waste but mainly talk about what we see in the legislation it's a while analyzing it so the legislation of Azerbaijan Republic does not specifically define food loss and waste so however the legislation in this concept provides a definition for household waste and the problems of food waste are determined under that notion too. However household waste which also is called solid household waste includes the items substances and materials formed in the settlements as a result of the life activities of the population and like food waste food loss also does not get itself a specific definition under Azerbaijan legislation however there is a benefit in looking also like when we analyze the specific articles on production of the law on production and household waste this law defines the production waste as residues of raw materials substances and semi-finished products which also brings a certain type of gaps together with itself and if we go further in this part you may see how the food loss index at the national level in this chart it's more like define the levels and also stages starting from pre-harvest also the harvesting and so on I would not talk about this much because it was already discussed by the previous speakers but I would go continue also with the specific parts again so as you see there is I have mentioned that the law on production and household waste and specifically certain articles are defining the issues that are directly engaged with our subject and by this by seeing these laws and also this image we can draw the food loss and waste management hierarchy in the country and if we like see further use and also things that we have in the country like in this sphere we may see that there are also legal entities or some type of initiatives that they are trying to use food waste in a different way in order to reduce it and to take certain benefits of them I would just mention specific examples now there is the policy directives that indicate they are aiming to increase their capacity to restore resources through the sorting, processing and also reusing of the waste and additionally several companies that have established the small electric power plants like in Gobustan as you may see and also initially we are generating electricity from food waste which is also another like reusing of this food waste in a better way also there is a private actor in this field named you can see from the news part it's called the European LLC that which is involved in the processing wasted cooking oils into products as biofuels and cosmetics and also nutrition that it's also involved in their disposal and about the reuse of them I would go through some statistics that you may see also here that there is a quote that I've noted specifically that approximately 25% of food products are wasted on a monthly basis in the country meaning they resulted from irrational usage of their products this is mentioned by the chairman of the Free Consumers Union and you see that there are also some statistics that how many tones and products that were neutralized by various methods and means and also how the household food waste estimated is here is 93 per capita year and also what is what was estimated for another year and this statistical information shows the amount of food loss that it is increasing and there is no specific issues that are regulating and also for the reduction of the relevant food loss and waste I would just pass quickly to institutional framework here that as you may see there are several bodies that are involved in this process and each of them have their own authorities and also mandates and rights and duties in this frame I would not again go too much deep of them because it will take much of the time of our but they are all of these like as starting from cabinet of ministers, the minister of economy, minister of ecology and nature resources, minister of health local executive bodies, tariff council, Baku city executive power specifically in Baku region they are in this chain as food safety agency and so on and there are also some private actors also there are some entities that are established by the initiative of the state that are very positive and there are aiming to be a part of this process and to contribute to the reduction of food loss and waste and here we can see as main parts from the specific laws that the law on production and household based contains the principles for managing the waste in general it's specifically on food loss but all kind of waste and also using general wording such as elimination and reproduction that needs to be clarified more and there are also other laws about polluting prohibition on the polluting the water, forest lands and etc. I would go further with the second part of this issue that it's mentioned whether a polluter case or the education part it's why it is important because it is one of the very positive things that we see in the legislation it's within the duties of the minister of economy that the preparation of the relevant proposals and application of the mechanism on extended producer responsibility which we call also shortly EPR that this extended producer responsibility is a policy strategy in which producers take a considerable amount of either financial or physical responsibility for treatment or disposal of post-consumer products so by assigning such type of responsibility food loss and waste could be prevented at the source and environmentally friendly design could be provided for and also recycling the relevant materials and additional to this we may also look to the educational part that we mentioned in our recommendation part of our report I would go to it later in deep but as a waste prevention measure the legislation also specifies the polluter case principle and according to that there is obligation over individuals and legal persons that they have to give certain amount of payment for the waste collection waste utilization and waste disposal regarding food labeling and date marking there is also some gaps in this part too which needs more improvement so like there is again consistent with article 11 of the assumption law on food stuff the packaging and labeling issues have been in line and also determined and it specifies the terms of expiry and regarding the quality and consumption value however like the legislation itself does not comply with the CXS1 1945 general standard for the packaged foods and in this regard it's worse to mention that like there is a need for proper legislation defining the difference between two terms I mean that preventing for in order to prevent the food waste and in our report we put a question forward that whether these regulations result in the emergence of the food loss and waste more like and this what we think also this would also help for the reduction of the food waste in the country and if we look to the economic instruments that we name fiscal and other incentives or maybe disintensive this also is one of these issues that would refrain people or entities for creating more waste and also there is one shortage that the tax code as an economic instrument as a part of the issues that create economic incentives for the people it does not provide such type of incentive for the people or entities or organizations that could be an other asset please be mindful of the time we are running short I hope you can finish up by this I will finish the issues so the official control we mean there are also in the legislation we may see some administrative penalties that here are noted that for pollution and for also spreading this type of waste and here it's a final part that in the recommendations we note that the assertive bodies the relevant duties shall be identified clearly because they are intruding with each other also there are some legal uncertainties that are in the legislation they should be clarified the relevant laws if there are that not in place they should be adopted and also improved and also there should be established some economic incentives and also among the community there should be education more on food loss and waste and also awareness raising this is all for my side thank you very much for your patience and listening thanks thank you Rashi for this informative presentation dear speakers I would like to remind you to please stay within your time frame for 15 minutes per country so if two of you are presenting that would mean about 7 7.5 minutes each so now we go over to Kyrgyzstan and Max Akbek Amanov national value chain consultant will present the situation in Kyrgyzstan good morning dear colleagues I hope you can see my presentation I I would like to present about the loss of waste and joy of our republic I would like to stop at some key moments of my presentation that is this for example the absence of advanced technology this is the loss of extreme and unpredictable circumstances this is also the lack of water irrigation water this is besides the mentality of our people about the loss and also the barriers in the trade and of course the recommendations here I would like to draw your attention to the small goods of our production at Pashne only 1,200,000 guitars here you see that we have 453 40,000 5127 goods of the subject you imagine after the collapse of the union the lands were distributed and very small goods you see if with the help of the calculator very small profits are obtained on one let's say Christian or farm here for the 19th year the last data the main cultures there we have grain, rice sugar potatoes vegetables fruits so assessment of the analysis the loss of trade was held last year last year with the help of the interview with some personal meetings here you see exactly in which areas that is, these were producers farmers, farmers who grow grain oil cultures beans potatoes, apples there is fish milk production beer processing flour meat production hotel restaurant business consumers and hypermarket here is the number hypermarket this is one famous brand hypermarket it has about 45 files throughout the country that is, data were taken and communicated and data were obtained from 45 hypermarkets the main losses how it happens here first of all, this lack of high harvest seeds and planting high reproduction production or their high price also very expensive mineral fertilizers pesticides chemicals as well as burning oil that is, it is during cleaning during planting and leaving besides, losses occur because of the wear of the moral physical wear of our agricultural technology the park of our technology unfortunately many farmers they do not know their agricultural technology and receive services that is, services starting from processing soil to cleaning waste besides lack of advanced practice and technology you see on the first photo harvest and apple all that many responsible storage they are forced to collect harvest right on the field they steal the polyethylene film put the harvest on top again with a film or a hammer or a nightmare and start to sell already or to the end of the year closer to the new year here you see a typical photograph in many farmers they store their products more or less in such conditions more or less in such conditions there is also a storage of oil and some wheels winter wheels from vehicle vehicles that is, there is no ventilation does not correspond to modern requirements the next factor which leads to losses is also the climate it will be dry early winter and also COVID-19 here is the first photo where you see a yellow tractor this is the photo was made not far from our capital literally 20 kilometers here we have carrots which are absolutely suitable for consumption but due to the fact that last year due to the outbreak of COVID-19 because of the quarantine there were closed borders many farmers in 2019 put the carrots on export in particular, it is in Kazakhstan and in the Russian Federation but due to the quarantine they, it turns out, paid all winter services vegetables they took out the harvest and they could not sell that is, they were forced to take it to the dump in the end the local administration decided to take out fresh carrots on the dump the second photo was made this year we had a normal dry if in particular in the Chuzhka region in the beginning of May and on this day there was not a drop of water there was not a drop of water such a cyclical year we got a normal dry and according to the official Ministry of agriculture of our republic about 30-40% exactly in the grain harvest we did not get the harvest on the right you see cabbage it was made last year due to the arrival of the early carrots this photo was made in the south in particular in the Chuzhka region exactly here they had it was earlier earlier carrots all of which they lost the harvest of cabbage here, as I said in the beginning we had a mentality in the process of some events for the first time weddings some funeral a huge amount of natural food just goes away approaches unfortunately our people understand that it is impossible to do and that it is not good nevertheless there is such a stereotype that it is necessary to reduce these expenses but they say let it start someone else, but not me what do people think in Central Asia there is such such a mentality unfortunately we are very stuck in the opinion of other people very big losses take place on funeral a few heads of a large raga have been rolled horses to be buried with honor or send as if to the world of a disabled person on weddings even worse even worse very big losses on funeral of pleasure next factor we analyzed some commercial barriers in sale you see the photo it was also made not far a line from a fur is sent to Kazakhstan or to the Russian Federation it happens due to lack information on the market besides other factors are distant distribution of main markets of pleasure then the lack of any documents not in accordance with the state of the customs union there are such barriers or the return of products besides many farmers are forced to sell for free very cheap all that needs to be sent to school school also there is factor distribution of income it was not fair between farmers producers workers and middlemen here I would like on this slide I would like briefly to stop on those losses that we received meeting our farmers producers workers as you can see 20% losses we have when making then after cleaning after cleaning there are 3% in the process of processing 1% when using 3% then the clubs you see the big share is when producing when growing and 10% this is happening during the process of processing but according to the local products you see around 5% is happening during the process of processing here I would like to say that these data were received during the preliminary meetings with our farmers as for legislation that is, for recommendations we have government in 2012 received a government program on the development of the trade logistics centers this is a vegetable storage the farmer there puts his product for a certain amount and where there are all the necessary conditions and these requirements they quite correspond to the requirements besides recently in the summer of July 22 at the parliament in the first reading adopted the law to at least sort out the processes of ebillian trade similar orders and events dedicated to the memory of the lost that is, here to limit let's say, guests or to limit the amount of auto-transport funds that participate in the cartel besides it is recommended the perfection of the normative legal acts and the financial mechanism of the credit support of the farmers that is, to sell them some annual credits further the perfection of national legislation and the policy in the region to provide and control the losses of food waste also providing the presence of the legal basis for the use of food waste and repeated use as well as in terms of innovation in the control of food waste and here is the last slide also the recommendation is import of high-productive family land material of the state support of the water users association the control of irrigation networks as well as the land users as well as the land users besides lowering the price of agricultural equipment that is, to consider this the mechanism of credit of our agricultural products to provide annual credits for the purchase of agricultural equipment and besides increasing the potential of the participants production of the household chain through training distribution of forward practice also support and recommendation of the recovery system and the last organization of the information company in the aim of changing the model of behavior this was the last slide thank you for your attention thank you thank you thank you thank you for this very interesting presentation and as you say mentality and behavior change starts with each and every one of us let's now move to Turkmenistan Rahim Babaliyev national value chain consultant and Davlet Jamugliyev national legal consultant will offer their perspectives on the issue in the country Rahim, over to you thank you very much good morning dear participants of the sub-regional conference on food, loss and waste reduction let me share the presentation I think we may have okay I think he's back Rahim you're muted Rahim please unmute yourself to speak Rahim can you hear us we have no sound from you can you unmute yourself do you hear? yes thank you good morning dear participants of the sub-regional conference on food, loss and waste reduction organized by FAO I am Rahim Babaliyev I will be representing for this important region project due time limits I will go direct to the presentation my first slide will give brief information about police and institutional background for the food, loss and waste reduction in the country I will pass this slide first because this issue will be presented in more detail by Mr. Jamugliyev after my presentation we will be move on to the question we want the month of 2021 Day today September we know roughly from last year carefully and honest through overseas for this storage, processing and distribution infrastructures, and state-owned banks provide consensional lending for this aim. Turkmenistan's economy is gradually transforming into market economy relations, consequently the role of private sector in all value chains in different industries is increasing dynamically. As a result of food abundance, market rules like competition, economic interests of the actors in the market facilitate the food laws and waste in the country. It is also worth mentioning that Turkmen people have traditional and ethical views on non-acceptable of food laws and waste. It is asserted by some people as seen to waste food. Some international and regional organizations presented in Turkmenistan are implementing projects and programs having indirect influence on food laws and waste reduction in the country. Before coming to the preliminary results of the inception mission, I want to say a few words about project activities in Turkmenistan. The project document was signed on December 2 last year, a bit later. National project team including me have started working on July this year. Now I am carrying out inception missions as for now we have succeeded meeting with some representative of the private sector working in different value chains in different food industries and international organizations based in Turkmenistan. Meeting with state agencies, ministries, municipalities, academia and other stakeholders are being planned and expected to be organized in October next month. In this slide I have listed industries which I succeeded meeting with private sector representatives. Due to time limit I will go into detail of my findings at only three industries. As you can see they are market and vault, fruit and vegetable production, fruit and vegetable distribution, meat processing and meat processing industries. The result of meetings with other state or other industries will be covered in more detail in the report of inception mission. In this slide I listed international organizations and international financial institutions which I plan to meet for discussing programs and projects implemented by them in the fields having indirect relations to food laws and waste reduction. So far I have succeeded meeting with almost all organizations listed on this slide. The main part of my presentation is starting here where key findings of inception mission will be covered. As I mentioned I will cover all the three industries. As you can see on the table key challenges of the fruit and vegetable production industry are possible overproduction caused by absence of information in real time. Possible recommendation for this challenge could be establishment of online data center using digital solutions providing information about the amount of production of different crops. Second is soil salinity in some agricultural lands is negative influencing amount of crops produced. In this regard it is recommended to take actions aimed at improvement of land reclamation of agricultural lands like increasing the efficiency of irrigation canals. Third plant-based negative affecting crop amount can also be a challenge in some case among private sector. To address this challenge it is recommended to improve the system of agricultural consultant services to farmers and entrepreneurs working in agriculture. In this regard the quality of extension services providing up-to-date information about new agricultural technologies including plant protection techniques could be improved. And the last draft caused by climate change is also an arising in Central Asia and require urgent adaptation measures to be taken like introduction of water-saving irrigation technologies. Distribution of produced fruits and vegetables is also crucial in food supply chain. Key challenges in this industry are lack of cooperation between farmers and distributors. Online agricultural platforms where farmers and distributors can reach to information about availability of produced crops and distribution of canals in real time. It can be very useful for them to communicate with each other. It will reduce food loss and waste during distribution. And second is storage and transportation infrastructure. Storage and transportation infrastructure are representatives of private sector involved in transportation. Wholesale and retail marketing could be developed by consulting them in this regard. And third is inadequate inventory management. And one of the problems in distribution sector is inadequate inventory management. First come, first go must be applied by specialized inventory management software at warehouses, retail and wholesale units. It will reduce food loss and waste in the distribution. In meat processing industry, some slaughterhouses are sometimes managed improperly in household level. To avoid this, private sector should be encouraged and supported to establish network of certified slaughterhouses. Improper transportation of raw meat from slaughterhouses. Improper transportation of raw meat from slaughterhouses to the processing unit is managed improperly due to absence of cooling systems, in some case in household level. So we have to strengthen transportation infrastructure by providing support private sector in modernizing transport system with cooling systems. Lastly, I will say a few words about meat processing industry, which is very important in sustaining food security in the country. As I said, food processing industry is being modernized steadily, but it in some case in some small processing units, way appearing after cheese making is wasted. To address these challenges, small enterprises could be supported to widen range of produced products from way, like casein. In some case, meat processing in small enterprises is wasted due to presence of antibiotic residues in raw meat received from households. It can waste all the meat in the tank leads food loss and wasting the huge amount. We have to strengthen technological capacity of small meat enterprise for making express analysis of raw meat when receiving. As a conclusion, I want to say that the government of Turkmenstan under wise leadership of esteemed president of Turkmenstan fully supports private sector and there is political will and state support to introduce advanced wasteless food production technologies in the country. We have observed that the minister of agriculture and environment protection of Turkmenstan and union industrial of Turkmenstan are open for cooperation in this field. Considering huge experience and potential of FAO in this field, it is highly recommended to implement further projects and programs in Turkmenstan aimed at strengthening the capacity of all stakeholders in order to reduce food loss and waste in the country. We have to cooperate with international organizations that are committed to implement projects and programs having indirect influence on food loss and waste production. Private sector is supporting the project and ready for cooperation and implementation of activities aimed to technology transfer. Thank you for your attention. Thank you, Rahim. Let me pass the floor to national legal consultant in Turkmenistan, Davlet Jomagulia. Davlet will present in Russian so you may want to switch to interpretation for those of you who need it. Go ahead, Davlet. Of course yours. Dear ladies and gentlemen, I would like to present to you the results of the preliminary analysis of the program documents and the legal base of Turkmenistan regarding the sale of waste and waste, as well as present some proposals. The development strategy of the country is based on the program of the president of the Turkmenistan and the social and economic development of the country in 2019-2025. The important place in the development of the rural economy is, as the main, the growth in the supply of food security and food security. The program is based on the priority task of the rural economy in the field of food security. This is the production of food in sufficient quantity for food security, the technological production of food security. Further, the social and economic development of the country presupposes the preservation of the achieved level of food security in the country. The important priority is the introduction of the principle of green economy in all agricultural activities, which presupposes the recovery of the surrounding environment, including measures to reduce waste, including sales. The program and legal documents recognize the health of a person of the main value and the priority goal of the social and economic development of the country. The component of the health of a person and the well-received population is the provision of security and quality of food products. The priority of the state in relation to healthy and full-fledged food is provided in the law of the Ministry of Public Safety in the new edition of November 23, 2016. The program is created by a broad legal base that regulates the relationship in the field of food security, the security and quality of food products, and waste. The legal base is to capture the regions. I will not list all the laws in the management of waste, I will only call the regions. The control of security and quality of food products, standardization, certification of food products, standardization of food products, as well as mortification of goods and waste. The legal base captures the issues of waste, but the independent status of waste and waste is not determined by the law yet. The legal standard requirements that provide safety of food products, the sale of waste products, capture the entire commercial chain, the collection of transportation, storage, processing, realization and consumption. The legal mechanism allows the system of state organizations to coordinate, control and implement the monitoring of security and quality of food products, to prevent the sale of waste through the entire commercial chain. And this system of state control is considered in the law of Turkmenistan about the sale of safety on November 23, 2016. The legal base, the listed legal base, is designed to ensure and, in most cases, achieve its goals in maintaining the single requirements of security and quality of food products, reducing the sale of waste in large quantities through the entire commercial chain. The complex interaction of the management mechanism through the entire commercial chain from collection to consumption. The legal base provides high level of responsibility of producers and mobilization of resources to avoid large quantities of waste products. And the legal base provides a clear distinction to the state organizations on the implementation of the task of providing food safety. And the research and observation conducted by FAO shows the deep consequences of the world scale of uncontrolled waste products in the environment. The negative economic, ecological and social consequences of the waste products. The rational use of food products can lead to the development of the state of economic and social effects. Based on rational use of food products, the strategy used to reduce the sale of waste products is based on an example of the hierarchy of uncontrolled waste products. For the purpose of rational use of uncontrolled waste products and reducing the loss of the legal base of the Ministry of Security and the quality of food products by management of waste products can be significantly expanded and filled with such concepts that food waste is too much for the production of food products and the development of food products. The expected role of this idea to prevent the loss of waste products is the following. The advantage of the waste products and the loss of waste products is carried out in the focus of the legal mechanism. There are regulations normative requirements and demands for satisfactory withdrawal and loss in the control of the withdrawal increase the obligation and responsible subject of administrative activities to prevent satisfactory losses and withdrawals and legal prerequisites are created to strengthen the development of the culture of rational consumption In our opinion, the addition of the law on the withdrawal, the position for regulation of the selection of the withdrawal pleasure from other types of withdrawal taking into account the collection, conducting expertise for secondary processing and use the addition of the law of Turkmenistan on the protection of safety and quality of food products to prevent satisfactory losses and the ability to provide satisfactory excesses in public food and supermarket as well as strengthening the potential of operators of satisfactory business in modern technology of processing food products significantly bringing into the process the rational use of satisfactory withdrawal and reduction of losses the legal basis of the country is considering the certification and standardization of the food products for the protection of the market from uncertified goods the development of the instructions for classification, use of the food products, not the past certification and standardization as well as the lack of contribution to the reduction of satisfactory losses and losses I would like to point out here that, as was noted earlier, the economic and economic management mechanism of Turkmenistan is complicated to interact thanks to this, the management mechanism of production and consumption of food products has the potential to transition to functioning, in principle, of the unauthorized food cycle as shown in the diagram, if starting with the transfer of the harvest to the processing and the return of its use as a biogumus for this, the change in the tax legislation is proposed for the introduction of the year for the business operators of food the purpose of stimulating their processing of food products for secondary use investment in activity, reduction of satisfactory withdrawals, motivation for satisfactory charity and investment in the unauthorized processing cycle satisfactory withdrawal of food and processing of satisfactory raw materials, as well as all organic withdrawals, can be processed in biogumus and vermicompost and used further on low-reduced soil, this can be done as an unauthorized cycle of production of food and its use Thank you very much for your attention Thank you very much, Davlet, dear colleagues. Let's now move on to Timur Nuradinov, value chain consultant and Umida Khaknazar, national legal consultant They will present their findings and recommendations for Uzbekistan. Let's find out what they have to say. Timur, the floor is yours Thank you very much. Can you see? Yes, go ahead Okay, thank you Timur, there's an echo on your side, I think Just a second. Is it okay now? Yes, thank you Thank you very much. Well, I'll try to be short, as you might understand that the situation with the food and lost waste is very serious in Uzbekistan Unfortunately, there is no management system and weak control on the food waste And I think that the good, the positive is that Uzbekistan makes the first steps towards to control the food loss and waste And the issue was raised by several agencies and the political parties, for instance the ecological party of Uzbekistan had a seminar about the management of the food, waste and loss And the technical assistance expertise needed to manage the food, waste and loss at all the level And I think that according to the different sources, agriculture crops of the social importance in Uzbekistan's of potatoes Wheat, rice, onions and carrots and agriculture crops of strategic importance, grape, sweet cherry, apricot, pomegranate, peach, plum, apple and persimmon And because of the strategic importance of, because of the export of these products to other countries As for now, I conducted several meetings with the Gaunt officials, private sector, research institute, university, restaurants and associations Currently I drafted an inception report and planning to conduct field visits to regions and continue meeting with the stakeholders Well, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, the loss of the crops is about 30% for fruits and vegetables at the collection, transportation and storage stage It's all cumulative, but I believe after talking to several sources, loss can be higher and which is also this information given by the unofficially At the moment due to the lack of the responsibility of the value chain actors in post harvest operation, the loss can be higher Unfortunately, there is a lack of understanding of required quality product, agriculture product by farmers as a result, different size Quality for the same variety of products produced by the farmers, which brings to the waste of all these products which cannot be exported or sold at the local markets Lack of infrastructure in the rural area, there is no collection centers, cold storages, unfortunately the lack of currently the enforcers in Tergana Valley and Samarkand, some of the farmers And they started building the cold storage but still I believe it's still not enough The most important is the poor forecasting of prices for agriculture products for the next year, which resulted in all production and fall of prices, for instance we had a case when the price for the cabbage was two years ago is quite high Three years ago and then two years ago the farmer start growing the cabbage and the prices fall down and which resulted in the over production of this product So lack of the processing facilities for agriculture products as well is a critical issue As for the food waste situation in Uzbekistan, Uzbekistan generates around 100 million tons of industrial waste and we are the 35 million cubic meters of household waste annually and on average according to the sources And about 25% in the average cabbage can is the food waste Unfortunately, collected garbage is simply thrown into the open landfill outside of the towns And currently there are some initiatives to build the processing facilities but it's still not at that level where they can process all the garbage 2,000 tons of garbage every day in Tashkine thrown into the landfill with an area of 59 hectares and depth of 40 meters And currently this landfill is full and they're planning to give another 35 hectares for the waste There is no separation of organic waste and no modern waste disposal and recycling facilities There are some initiatives taken by the international institutions and some small pilot projects for recycling waste into the fertilizer is implemented Negotiations are going on the way, use of methane at the landfill, I'm talking about the landfill outside of Tashkine with the potential investors Well, so what will be recommendations? So basically I collected the recommendations These recommendations from my side and also which was some of the recommendations I taken from the several sources and I agree with them So for instance, introduce a legal document with a description of responsibilities for each value chain actor for the whole process From three to work where each value chain actor will be responsible for the losses starting from the collection, sorting, grading and transportation, etc Improve pre-harvest and post-harvest practices with aim to expand the shelf life of agriculture products and reduce the loss As well as the most important capacity building value chain actors in the food loss and waste prevention and reduction As well as development of local extension services, which is this is the game, this recommendation from the minister of agriculture and I agree with that And now actually they currently they implementing this agro logistic centers, which is can play an important role that covered all aspects Development of local extension services that covers all aspects of the agriculture process, increase the number of processing facilities for agriculture products, which is most important thing Building infrastructure for collection storage in the rural area and improve access to financial services and my information by the value chain act So when I said about increase the number of processing facilities so when we have the the the agriculture products which is not meet the requirements for the exporting Then definitely we need to think about the processing facilities The other recommendations will be reduce water waste through prevention reduction recycling and use measures which is quite understandable public awareness indication on waste reduction This all for I'm talking about Uzbekistan creating centers for population for separate the waste organic and solid I counted there are some initiatives taken by my sister which is the responsible for the waste The processing Let's see how it will go a building modern waste disposal and recycling facilities in several regions Strict control by state bodies for illegal landfills and increased fines for all kinds of waste industrial organic This is very crucial and very important Provide additional benefits to potential investors interested in waste management Thank you very much and now, Umida please Hello Thank you Timur Umida We're waiting for you to present Umida are you ready Hello everyone sorry for Can you hear me Yes go ahead please Uh-huh Just to save time I will skip Okay that's a great I will just jump to the legal analysis Because of the shortage of time As Umida already mentioned, Timur already mentioned There are a number of strategies have been adopted and we can say that yes over the past two or three years there's some Significant change in the perception and some of the actions of the government in terms of legislation But mostly we can say they're mostly focusing on waste part rather than lost part But though some strategic documents have been adopted such as the strategy of waste on agricultural development Strategy on waste management, the concept of effective use land of water resources in agriculture But these are sort of strategies and concepts that are very important for identity for sort of setting the vector and then policy But in most part they're kind of aspirational And that yes for the first time that you lost they use this terminology is reduced food loss as one of the objectives You know and by by by implementing and applying good agricultural practices good manufacturing good hygiene etc practices But when it comes to real mechanisms and illegal term like when it comes to real primary loss and Some specific regulations there's some gap in actually enforcing those practices So we can say that for the first time even the food and the definition of food waste is not really even defined specifically When the first strike resembling definition is used in a quite peripheral kind of resolution on rendering services on collection of transportation of solid liquid waste which is more sort of a waste aspect of the issue But now and it's used very infragmentally and not in the context of general you know the food and lost weight And then so the definitions, legal definitions for food surplus, food donations, food banks, food waste are missing still in the legislation in the primary and specific regulations And at the same time the food waste management strategy and the concepts they for the first time they include this set as a priority separation of base organic to non-organic so that food degradable waste is part of organic waste And there's some initiatives on pilot projects on separating into five categories including organic but they're still kind of very very weak and not really getting out of this sort of pilot approach and still as Timur mentioned it's all dumped together in landfills Then in terms of food loss at the production level although the concept again some of the latest the concept mentions that And also the part of the regulation of the Ministry of Agriculture on the functions of the Ministry of Agriculture mentions that now in order during the food spikes there should be some food reserves specific products like perishable goods to some kind of food reserves but so it's mentioned in a very narrow kind of context not as in the context of real food banks and the real food reserve you know that's supposed to be In the, as I said the good practices like good agricultural practices and at the factory level, good hygiene practices and good infection practices or like husk system etc are not yet embedded into the legislation as mandatory or as something that the food business operators must follow And in terms of labeling and date markings also is a big gap that there's still no distinction between quality and safety so that when it comes to date marking and labeling there is no distinction between best buy and used buy products so that all expiry dates referred to sort of safety And very short sort of expiry dates are set mainly by the regulators rather than food business operators that it should be So the local regulations on labeling like there's a technical regulation and there's overlapping sanitary norm They're not aligned with Codex elementarius standard on labeling and recommendations on these distinctions basically and when we look at the laws on food safety, the current law on food safety and quality of products and the technical regulation, Law certification, etc. They're all very outdated and focus primarily on and product certification and testing which is absolutely not modern approach and not adequate for ensuring safety north nor quality. So but the good news is that currently Uzbekistan is in the process of WT accession process and also in the process of preparing and drafting new additions of all these laws and basically repealing many like for example the certification will be repealed and there's a new law on safety, food safety is being prepared and the new law on technical regulations being prepared that will take into account all the WTO principles, SPS agreement principles and approaches of Codex and include hopefully label include GHP, GMP has as part of necessary, you know, obligations for FBOs and including good agricultural practices at the primary production level, and also the legal liability of FBOs which is also missing currently in the legislation so that FBOs have no legal responsibility, no primary responsibility for safety of products. So, just to sum up the conclusions could be made that the food labeling is missing the right one so that so that there is a choice to, for example, donate, you know, best buy products, let's say, or the food safety hygiene level the national legislation on food safety currently is not, doesn't have this important provisions on the primary responsibilities and GHP, GMP, GEP, other good practices and has for missing as part of necessary, you know, obligations and in the regulations. And the microbiological chemical parameters are not harmonized with Codex standards and parameters and they're not many of them are outdated based on old goals so it goes, or they are because of the focus of trade with Russia primarily and former Soviet, you know, the economic union member states which are also unfortunately many ways they're still not, well they're in the process of harmonization but still there are many of them are still based on goals so that methods of testing missing, sampling missing, etc., that are not aligned with Codex and that prevents from implementing good practices, GMP, GHP, hospital, etc. And then on food loss prevention also as I mentioned it's very narrow and not really, it's basically aspirational, you know, when the strategies have these provisions on applying good practices they're mainly aspirational because legal mechanisms and obligations are missing in the legislation. So we can say that on the food redistribution for consumption, food donations are not mentioned at all in the legislation and so that food banks are not mentioned and food donators are not considered, not, they don't have a status of, as a result have a status of FBOs, you know, that would be have primary responsibility. As I said, at this point, the more sort of attention is in this context is received for waste management, so waste management and a number of resolutions have been taken over the past couple of years and so that they're all the key problems are basically pronounced there, which is good news, so that they acknowledge that there's too much waste and it's all mixed and there's no energy, no biogas, no compost and all should be done. But again, due to lack of investments and because of many of these state companies monopolize or even if they're not state but they're controlled by the state so there's not much competition in this area therefore they can't attract investments. And one of the very important issues that I'd like also to highlight, which is not directly maybe related to a few, but definitely impacts, it's a systemic question of insecure land tenure rights and continuous government contracts policy for cotton wheat, which basically prevents farmers and primary producers and other investors for investing to good agriculture practices and manufacturing hygiene practices, which is, this is some, that's a political very sensitive issue. And I think as long as this practice continues, it will be very, very problematic to overcome all these food loss and waste in terms of more effective and in a more effective way, you know, so that because to implement all these good practices, of course, there's need for investment and but it means that there's need for secure and long term land tenure rights, you know, basically for farmers, and they should not be ordered, you know what to grow and what to do because, and that results from this government contracts for cotton wheat which still continues. So, I would say that overall Uzbekistan, of course, culture is discouraging food waste, as like in many central Asian countries, and overall there is a cultural food sharing obviously food is very important part of daily life. And but at the same time because of this growing difference between urban and rural and of course the Tashkent is becoming very, very big city and industrial food production is going to increase over the years, obviously, and there's a very has been a long, many years policy of cheap bread, you know, which led to over consumption basically of bread and feeding it to animals as a result because it's just too much. And unhealthy diets is also obviously sort of spread because of that so these are I think very generic and common problems in all our countries. But these are probably some of the key highlights I would like to make in that in a little further so thank you very much. Thank you very much, and thank you dear colleagues for your observations and recommendations on the best course of action. These will feed into the work of the national strategies, no doubt. So now it's time to move on to the next session, and we will focus on examples of collaboration among different actors for greater impact. I'm happy to introduce our next speakers Julia Nazarova, member of the board and president of food bank, Ruth, Ruth, and Vladimir Konstantinov, in direct tax services leader and partner at Price Waterhouse Coopers in Russia, will introduce the case of an NGO joining forces with the private sector to lobby the government on tax deduction for food and goods donations to food banks and charities. You, you and Vladimir will present in Russian, so you may want to switch to interpretation for those of you who need it. Let's listen in. Over to you colleagues. Thank you. Julia, as you agreed. Yes, the presentation should be. Then we'll wait for a minute. I can start now. Colleagues are working, now the presentation will be. Colleagues, good day to everyone. My name is Julia Nazarova, I am the president of the Russian Food Fund, I am very happy to participate in the conference. We are the only food banks in Russia, members of the Global Association of Food Banks. We have been working for 12 years in Russia and have already talked a lot about the topic of consumer losses, food waste, about those mechanisms that are necessary in order to, yes, thank you, about those mechanisms that are necessary in order to, first of all, first of all, not bring joy to the state of waste. This is really true, since the demand from the society is growing, unfortunately, the pandemic has negatively affected all the indicators that were before, within the goals of sustainable development, including about 100 million people, more than 600, almost 700 people who have already lived in the state of hunger. Therefore, our task is to gather the best cases, understand what they are working in our country, and, in fact, integrate them into those processes that will help us reduce the number of consumer losses and food waste that appears from the country. We have faced, as a food bank, with this in Russia. In general, it is necessary to say that this has affected, in this case, as it is not strange, positively understanding, understanding the society of how important the society, the state, the power of business, which is also very important, how important it is to combine efforts and develop those mechanisms, those methods that will allow us to react proactively to the new demand. We have been dealing with food waste for a long time with our partners, discussing the situation in Russia, which is the following. Until recently, there has been a tax time for delivery of goods and food waste in the country. Each year we deliver about 8,500 to 6,000 tons, 8,500 tons. We work in different categories, we work all over the country, but, of course, this is not a limit, this is not a ceiling, we understand how much huge consumer losses and food waste are, and the task is to understand what is the main barrier. During our cooperation in 2015, we started working with the company Price Superhouse Coopers, my colleague Vladimir Konstantinov is present. Thanks to the work with the professional community, because we are engaged in saving food, we interact in fields, we work with companies, we distribute these products, attracting and corporate volunteers, and just volunteers who are ready to spend time, to collect and distribute products. This is what we do, of course, without any daily expertise, we would not be able to make further steps. And within the framework of the goal of sustainable development, this is not only a specific goal, reducing the liquidation of waste, the liquidation of hunger, in this case in Russia, not talking about hunger, rather, the lack of food, the rationalization of processes, the production of household waste. In this direction, we began to interact, that is, in fact, in general, with the right, so to speak, point, thanks to which we found a common contact. And I would probably already like to convey the word to Vladimir so that we just share this case, which we have such a positive one, which can be taken over and implemented in other countries. Vladimir. Thank you. Colleagues, good afternoon. Yes, I am a tax partner of the Russian company PWC. We have been cooperating since 2015 together with the fund of the Russian Sellers. Yes, I represented a group of experts in the area of correspondence and taxes. Today I would like to talk more about taxes. I have already spent some time at your event, I have been listening to the previous speakers. Yes, once again, it reminds me of the performance and comes to the understanding of what the number of factors depends on, so to speak, the change of practice. And here is a multilateral work related to the fact that the consumption was more rational, that the loss was less. Yes, the previous speakers noted the lack of people, some habits, some technical issues related to the management of business activities. And what is probably our case? We probably want to say, in general, that the regulatory of the country also affects the development of those processes. The fund, which Julia calls, is engaged in the fact that it is ready to get the benefits of the quality products from some subjects that are ready to do it and to bring these products to the future. This is undoubtedly a socially useful and important activity, and there is a regulatory. If we talk about the fact that, again, this process is necessary for it to be massive, for it to be legal, we have come across this in Russia, that it is important that the law and the law is taken into account, that is, of course, but before this activity got developed, before such a broad awareness of this problem and the specifics of the activity related to this, the law and the law were formulated without taking into account the situations that occur in this activity. Therefore, with what we have come across, to put it simply, there is the fact that, again, some subjects, similar to this fund, the Russian market, they are meeting with potential donors of the products that these products have, there is an understanding that they will not be implemented and sent to the economic side. In principle, there is even the readiness of these products to be transmitted instead of sending them to polygons to be used, in the best case, to be used legally. But the law and the law were implemented in such a way that the potential donor is more expensive to be transmitted to food sharing, to be transferred to a bank account, than to wait for some time and send it to the utilisation, taking into account all the calculated expenses. Again, we in Russia have faced the fact that, well, going from the end, as it was, for example, three years ago, in principle, such a kind of activity from the donor side is considered as charity, and what does this mean in the taxes? It means that, based on the common rules, that all expenses related to charitable activities are not read-out, and that, so to speak, some reasonable amount of utilisation is considered part of the usual business activity and the expenses of utilisation in the whole world, in the whole world, without any significant problems and issues in the logistic bodies of understanding of the expenses. So, when we realized this and started working with it, with Julia and colleagues, and together with the donors, we had an expert advice on this issue. Our starting point was that in Russia, unfortunately, if you look at the new rules, at 30-40% it was more expensive to give the goods for charity purposes and to launch a chain of rational use of products in comparison with social utilisation. Well, again, there was a joint partnership here, work was done by donors and charity organisations. We were in charge of expert support. So, our whole group came to the dialogue with various state bodies in order to emphasise the lack of understanding of such a situation. Again, we conducted research and calculations indicating that social and social expenses for the Russian society are, of course, higher when it comes to utilisation. In principle, many state bodies are very interested in expanding the interest of non-commercial organisations that are independent of the state's participation and become a guide for the people on the road to the future. It is interesting to have a separate group, but, of course, the questions related to fiscal relations have their own specifics. But, again, as our discussions showed, to explain this situation in a more complex way that people have an understanding of these useful activities and social problems. But, of course, as a tax expert, I note that the situation is ambiguous and, of course, there are a number of objective fiscal risks that need to be investigated by the tax authorities and the Ministry of Finance. Naturally, the administration system and, in fact, the tax practice are such that the Ministry of Finance comes to assess the consequences of the behavior of changes in these rules. Will there be any non-commercial subjects that have nothing to do with this activity that will try to use these rules? Therefore, in fact, for several months we had meetings, discussions, explanations of what the problem is, and the consideration of various solutions that would be acceptable for the Ministry of Finance as well as for the NCO which, in particular, is engaged in food-sharing, so-and-so tax of the organs. That is, when you download the details, there are many important questions that need to be considered and the development of, so to speak, clearly highlights the actions. Therefore, in fact, these are the main four of that path through which we have gone through discussions in the expert community in the development of food-sharing. What are our current results? At the beginning, I noted that three years ago the potential tax of the organs represents 30-40% of what it is. This is a tax on profit and the NDS of the cost of the goods. Two key taxes. If, according to the old rules, it is considered as a charity, an exceptional activity, in which additional taxes arise from the donor when compared to the scenario of the usual utilization. Currently, according to the results of the cooperation with the state organs, we have come to a decision on the tax on profit. Since January 1, 2020, in Russia, there have been changes in the 25th tax tax in accordance with which the norm has been included for the transfer of goods to the charity for these purposes within 1% of the income. The law directly indicates such expenses, that is, the half of the problem that we formulated at the beginning was decided. The question of NDS is a little more difficult to calculate. That is, NDS basically has an exceptional NDS of implementation. There is NDS of purchase, so-called income NDS. In addition to the current rules when transferring goods for charity purposes, there is no need to calculate NDS of implementation. Nevertheless, there is a direct demand for NDS, which was paid to the developer for the purchase of this product or for the expenses associated with the production of this product. It was paid back to the budget. That is, again, we come to the point that in the old NDS, transfer of goods to charity purposes is still more expensive scenario compared to utilization. Well, we continue to continue to meet the issues that arise because traditionally, NDS issues are more sensitive. We understand the colleagues of fiscal bodies that are in charge of fiscal in fact, state interests associated with the income of the budget not according to specific activities, because we have carried out calculations and colleagues agree that in the literal sense of the fiscal effect of this norm, it is not significant. Here the question is how to limit the use of the norm only for those companies that have been watched. Therefore, it is such a independent internal tax task to appear in the subject of expert review. We do this and we hope that this problem will be solved. Naturally, there are many people with experience, but one thing is discussed at the level of technical experts, those people who directly methodologically differ from the other tax. Naturally, more productive communication is communication with representatives of state bodies that are, let's say, more widely watched, who can evaluate the importance of this question because when discussing technical issues in the NDS, including environmental costs associated with the scenario when the goods are being used, we return to the fact that the state itself spends money on support of small people. Of course, it is important to consider all these issues in the complex. However, the regulatory questions are not so simple. They are solved until the end. We continue our work. But, again, I will return to what I said at the beginning, according to our experience, the regulatory questions are also important for the development of the overall consumption, creating conditions for donors when the transfer of goods is not a problem for them. This, of course, contributes to the development of the correct practices of the consumption of resources. In short, the description of the case from our country is very pleasant to be at this event and to meet with questions that arise from various angles in other countries. Julia, do you have any comments? Thank you, Julia. Thank you, Vladimir. Thank you for your very interesting and detailed presentation. Indeed, the question of tax services and food sharing is a very important one in tackling food loss and waste. Let's now consider another example of a fruitful multi-sectoral engagement. Our next speaker is Mr. Özüm, acting General Secretary for the Union of Municipalities of Turkey. In addition to providing member incentives, the union collaborates with charity organizations for food donations and supports the development of a national food banking system. Mr. Özüm, we're excited to learn more. Hello. I haven't had the chance to listen to you, but I think my voice is coming. I'll continue then. Very valuable panelists and valuable participants and listeners. This meeting was previously called General Secretary for the Union of Municipalities of Turkey, but it didn't include you due to a very difficult day. First of all, I would like to make a brief introduction to the Union of Municipalities of Turkey in 1945. I would like to say goodbye to Mr. Naikhan. He says Maria Uzengin, a technical specialist. I would like to inform you that I have given you remote control for your presentation. As soon as I turn off the microphone, you can click on the screen once with a mouse and after that you can manage your presentation if it already works. Just let me turn off your microphone so as not to interfere with the translator. Okay, thank you very much. While I was doing it, I went two slides ahead. I think it would be the most successful. By the way, I was giving a brief information about the Union of Municipalities of Turkey. The Union of Municipalities of Turkey was established in 1945. In fact, we can say that the Union of Municipalities of Turkey was established in 2005 with the decision of the ministers of administration and financial administration. In 2005, the Union of Municipalities of Turkey was established in the whole country. The Union of Municipalities of Turkey was the only Union of Municipalities of Turkey and the Union of Municipalities of Turkey was established in the United States of America in September. In July of 15th of the year, the Union of Municipalities of Turkey had established the Union of Municipalities of Turkey with the decision of the ministers of administration. Now in October of 15th in the United States of America the Union of Municipalities of Turkey had established the Union of Municipalities of Turkey with our government reforms, especially with the great city of Beirut with the law, these duties and these activities have been expanded even more. Even though the city of Beirut has been established as the center of the center, the city of Beirut has been established as the center of the city of Beirut, the people of Beirut are the closest and the fastest decision-making mechanisms. This is an important factor in the issues that concern people. In this context, the cities have been working to reduce the loss of food and to reduce the consumption of water. They have been working to reduce the consumption of food. It is important to have the ability to decide quickly and have the ability to apply, to know the characteristics of the place, and to be able to participate in the production of farm policies according to the needs of the region and to apply these policies. By the way, can we come to the very beginning of the slide presentation? Thank you for your time. I can't take back the slide, but it's moving forward. Thank you from now on. With the support of the farm policies, our municipalities have been able to provide food banks. Especially with the pandemic, now we see our laws here. The first is the municipality law, number 5393, let me briefly tell you about Turkey, perhaps you may not have the opportunity to examine the local management part. The big cities and municipalities are immediately responsible for all applications on the first level. But in other cities and municipalities, at the same time, similar activities are being carried out with the municipality law. I talked about the municipality law. In fact, the municipality law is to protect the rights and benefits of all municipalities and municipalities. In particular, in the last period, the projects we have done with Favo, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Ministry of Food in Kapsam, are of a different importance. In addition to the ideas and projects we have done in many areas, we also have the Ministry of Food, we have started the food protection project. This is a program that we have carried out in our country and in the support of other programs and projects. In such ideas and projects, our municipalities are working on it. We are also in the first stage of their ideas. In the second stage, we are finding material support for the applications of the projects. The areas that our project provides are food banks, the household usage, the use of electricity, the loss of food by professional deposit of agricultural products, the distribution of food, the extension of the life of the crops, the return of food to the food industry. In this competition, we have the last day of this competition. We have the last day of this competition. We have the last day of this competition. The last day of this competition is the day when the food market gets taken over half a week let's say in May, it gets taken over half a month and so far more than a hundred municipalities are in this state. We will carry out our activities in the range of twelve municipalities. The building up of the food and the distribution of food is the priority of the application. We discussed. As the challenges of the competition, the lack of food and consumption is the main objective of the competition. By increasing the knowledge of the citizens and the distribution of food, we are also worried about the development of the future of the competition. By the way, the importance and the lack of food is also the goal of the competition. What are we expecting We expect to reduce the number of food waste in the future and provide awareness to the citizens. As other countries and friends have said, food distribution is an advanced plan for cultural development in our country. This is always the case with different issues. For example, during the period of a Ramadan month, people and people are willing to support each other. Or especially during this last period, during the pandemic, we caught our attention. During times when we couldn't go out or when we couldn't find what we wanted in the markets, even if our people are willing to support each other, or if they are willing to support each other, they are already doing this. They are already doing this without any additional support or order. When you look at the food bank, the need for food aid to be taken as a source of income, as you know, there are certain cities in the food bank. And they provide the necessary civil society services and help from their own sources. Here, it is important to know who needs it in the future. As a state, we can establish a center. Therefore, they can easily establish these systems. It is also important for the food banks to have the right and appropriate access to food. In the future, even though there are many areas related to food security, especially in the European Union, it is also important for the food banks to have the right and appropriate access to food that is donated in this way. In this regard, even most of our citizens are willing to support each other with their own resources. They are willing to provide the right and appropriate access to food provided by some cooperatives. If we were to give an example, there are actually many citizens. There are social markets, for example, there is a civil society center in Istanbul. There are many markets that we like. It is a system that aims to provide the number of people who are in need of a living standard. It is seen as a representative of the local order at the first stage of social law. In particular, products from the market, which are closely related to the history of the last use in the shopping chain, especially products from the markets, are evaluated in this way in order to prevent food consumption. In some cases, these products are free. In some cases, they can be distributed with a limited amount of free. If the domestic goods are going to be distributed to food waste, in fact, food waste is taking its place in our garbage. There are more of these large restaurants and hotels. Since these types of goods are the local products that collect, the domestic goods are distributed in order to increase the production of electricity. As a result of the research carried out in the world, the total number of domestic goods is 44 percent of the food waste. In our countries, these types of works continue. For example, if we were to give an example, we can say that the electricity system of our city of Gazantep has been used to produce bio-biological waste from the bio-biological waste. In the same way, we have the opportunity to supply electricity to big cities, big cities in El Azar, in other words, to cities in our cities. Our communities are also being deported professionally by domestic goods. In fact, when you look at food chain, especially in animal and agricultural food, the role of our citizens is very important. There are markets in the community, and there are activities to be carried out in the area about depoting. Here, we draw our attention to license depots, which are controlled by our owners. The owners of license depots provide food products developed by small producers, and they are depoted professionally. The owners of license depots are supported by the owners of license depots before they reach the end of their lives. Therefore, they are at least deported in the direction of reducing the amount of food that can be brought out of the area as much as possible. As we all know, the production of fruits and vegetables is a very important and important work. These types of applications are carried out by our owners. I always say our owners, but these types of applications are carried out in coordination with the Ministry of Agriculture as I mentioned earlier. But we see more and more owners in the application. These types of dried vegetables and fruits are more important in order to reduce the amount of food that can be brought out of the area. They are supported by the producers. As you know, the number of foods that are dried is increasing and the number of foods is decreasing. As we all know, the biggest problem is the food waste. Before the waste goes into the system, the food waste that is collected from factories in big institutions is transferred from the business to the street animals or to other animals that we share with our city. It is first prepared, preserved and brought into food. This is one of the important applications of our owners. We are providing these to our cats and dogs during the production process. I am trying to keep the supply short. As the institutions that provide the closest services to the people in our cities, we are providing support to the institutions that provide support to the institutions that provide support to the institutions that provide the closest services to the people in our cities. Thank you very much, Mr. Özüm. These innovative solutions to tackle food loss and waste at the local level are truly inspiring and we're very happy and glad for your collaboration with FAO. Now I would like to welcome our last speaker in this session, Christof Gjerksens, Global Public Affairs Manager at Too Good to Go. Being the world's largest business to consumers marketplace for surplus food, Too Good to Go also works with fellow industry partners, experts and local governments to improve date labeling for food products. I invite Mr. Gjerksens to talk about the impact of such collaboration. Thank you very much and thank you for inviting Too Good to Go on this session. I will share my screen so that I can upload the presentation. Do you see my screen at the moment? Yes. Fantastic. Okay, so hi everyone and thanks for having us. I will start with a brief introduction about Too Good to Go and what we do and then I will explain indeed how we partner with producers, manufacturers and retailers in the food chain to empower and inspire consumers on the issue of food waste and more specifically to tackle food waste linked to misinterpretation and misunderstanding of date labels, so expiration dates on products. So, Too Good to Go is a social impact company whose mission is to empower and inspire everybody to fight food waste together. And when we say empower and inspire, we mean that on the one hand we really want to give people a very easy, easy to use and practical tool to fight food waste on a day-to-day basis. So really empowering consumers to fight food waste. And when we say inspire, we mean that we want to tell a story, we want to tell the story of food waste, why it's such a big issue, why it's such a big problem. The implications that food waste has on the environment, but also the social implications and the economic consequences. So, you know, to really build that story around food waste, we want to create this movement against food waste and really raise awareness with consumers, with businesses, with policy makers, but also in schools to educate the next generation on the importance of this issue. So, let me start briefly with what I mean when I say empower and give people a tool, an easy tool to tackle food waste on a daily basis. We've created an app, a smartphone app that shows which stores in your neighborhood, in your area have surplus food at the end of the day. That can be from supermarkets, it can be from restaurants, from bakeries, from hotels, from gas stations, you name it, any food business basically in your surroundings. And the idea is that the application will connect you to the stores that have surplus food and you can order a magic bag of surplus food from the store that you want and pick it up at the end of the day. The solution there that we wanted to create is something very simple, something very accessible to everybody with a smartphone. And the idea being that you pick up a bag of surplus foods at reduced price so that you allow that store to still be able to sell that cost instead of having to throw it away. So it's very easy, that's how it works, that's how the interface looks on the left, you scroll through the stores that have surplus food and you order a magic bag on the app. On the middle screen you see what the interface looks like at the moment that you make the reservation and then you can serve, you confirm the reservation that you make and you pick up your magic bag of delicious surplus foods to avoid that it goes to waste. This is an example of some of the partners that we work with. As I said earlier we work with restaurants bakeries hotels, but also wholesale canteens producers supermarkets. So all across the food supply chain, and increasingly with very different types of stakeholders across the food chain. We come to the world's largest BTC marketplace for surplus foods, you know we launched in Denmark five years ago. And five years later we are spread a bit further across Europe, we're present in 16 countries in Europe, and we opened also in North America in the United States last year and in Canada this year a couple of months ago. And we're very proud to say that we've saved almost 100 million meals, 100 million magic bags of surplus food with all the more than 100,000 partner stores that we work with in all those countries. And you know, the users we track as well because you know we want to be able to share that story of food waste and that inspirational story of food waste with all the users that are using too good to go. So today is the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste from the FAO. We're putting out a big campaign across the countries where we are present to really underline the link between food waste and climate change. So according to a research project called Project Drawdown, reducing food waste is actually the number one solution to fight against climate change. Number one solution in terms of impact and easiness to implement. What these guys did is analyze about 90 renewable or solutions against climate change and fighting food waste came on top as the number one solution to fight climate change. So that's a message that at the occasion of the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste today, we want to bring across. The campaign is very visible in some European countries but in the US as well. So maybe hopefully you'll pick up a bit of visibility from that today. But it's the message that we wanted to bring to people today. I'll show you a very quick video on that. So I talked earlier about empowering and inspiring everybody to fight food waste together, right? So that empowering part is very much what we try to do by giving people that tool, that application to save surplus, rescue surplus food from stores that have surplus food. And with that inspiring it's about telling the story of food waste because one of the problems, global problems of food waste is that there's still a lack of perception of it being a problem, right? There is a lack of realization of the gravity of the consequences of food waste across the world. So that's what we want to do with this storytelling and this consumer level of awareness raising, changing of business practices as well. So we drive and we set up campaigns with different types of stakeholders to really bring that message across and to really tell that story. And this campaign that we have in partnership with businesses, with manufacturers, with retailers, food businesses is a perfect example of that. It's what I said, you know, we build this movement against food waste to inspire different groups of people on the importance of this issue, whether it's policymakers, businesses, households, schools. We try to include everybody across the food supply chain to really find a newfound respect for food. So this very specific campaign on date labels starts from a problem, right? It's the problem that's at least in the countries where we operate as to go. The problem of misunderstanding and clear and misinterpretation of the date labels. Whether you're looking at production level, consumer level or the retail level, there are problems with dates. And, you know, it's really those problems that we want to tackle with this campaign to ensure that the food waste levels linked to date labels are reduced. Studies from the European Commission show that 10% of all food waste in the EU at least is linked to date labels. People don't know what best before date means. People don't know what a use by date means. They don't differentiate between the two types of dates. They don't know that a use by date is a reflection of product safety and that a best before date is a reflection of optimal product quality. But that best before products can perfectly safely be consumed after the date has expired, as long as those products have been stored properly. So that is a message that we want to get across to consumers to avoid that they just throw away best before products which are perfectly safe to eat after the date. To avoid that they throw them away on the moment that the expiry date, the best before date arrives. So we encourage consumers to trust their senses, to go back to look, smell, taste best before products, before making the decision to throw them away. We also seek to inspire businesses to really change the practices that they have, first of all in the way that they communicate to consumers, but also in the way that they represent or show these dates on the products and in the relationships that they have between producers and retailers to extend the shelf life of those products as much as possible. So this is the problem that we wanted to tackle with this campaign, right? And we've got three approaches in this campaign. One is focused on consumers to impact the misunderstanding that there is some difference between those two dates. One is focused on businesses and we want to influence the practices that go on in retailers, for example. I'll show you a bit of some of the examples of that in the next couple of slides. And the third approach that we're taking with this campaign is really advocating changes through legislation. In Europe specifically, there will be a legislative reform of how these dates are brought forward next year. And that's something where we want to play a role through this campaign to make sure that, you know, again food waste levels linked to date labels are reduced. I would say that we want to impact consumers, first of all, how do we do that? You know, I said it before, we want to bring back the knowledge of the fact that best before products are safe after the date has expired, if they have been stored properly, and that people should trust their senses, right? So we're working with producers to add a label on their products to raise awareness on that issue. Adds the label that a best before product is not necessarily bad after the date has passed. Adds the information to ask consumers to look, smell, taste these best before products and really drive awareness with consumers that way. So you see it here, theoretically, what these labels look like on products. In practice, it looks like this. These are real life examples of products that are on shelves at the moment in supermarkets with many different large and small brands in several European countries. Maybe you recognize some of these brands, maybe you don't. But this is this is how we go about bringing this issue to the consumer is getting that commitment from producers. When I say producers, I mean manufacturers, of course, get back commitment from manufacturers to make that change on their products and bring that message to the consumer to highlight that best before products leads to a lot of food waste at the moment, and that they are not the same as used by products. So these are some back examples. You see different languages. Some of here are in French, some in Spanish, some in English, some in in what did I say Spanish, some in German at the bottom right as well. So it's a campaign that is that is at the moment operational in 11 countries in Europe. It's actually launching today in Belgium and Poland. So that's that's country 10 and 11 for the campaign. And there are about 600 brands across Europe participating in this in this campaign. So we really try to have an impact with consumers that way. When we try to impact businesses. I'll give you small examples as well. We create anti food waste shelves in supermarkets, as you see on the on the left, for example, those are shelves in supermarkets dedicated to anti food waste. Where retailers store products that are nearing or have passed their best before date to incentivize consumers to actually get the narrative for this campaign. Understand that these products are still okay to buy and really, you know, create more awareness and really change the practices of businesses that way. The photo on the on the on the right is a is a panel where we worked with Danone. Danone agreed to change the, the, the dates on a lot of their yogurt products, where they displayed used by dates were actually these products were perfectly fine to consume after the expiration date. And so they changed entire product lines from used by dates to best before dates. And so this is just a photo of the press conference and the discussion that, you know, brought brought was brought forward to explain this change to consumers. Let's skip over this one for lack of time. So this is just a visualization of the countries where the campaign is now live as I said it launched in Belgium and Poland today. And this is an example of some of the quick overview of some of the partner brands that we work with, obviously, we stopped listing them because we have about 600 brands in this campaign now. In the beginning we put the nice logos to have a graphical overview but today there are there are too many. I will just close by saying that what's important for us as well is to analyze the impact of this campaign. It's great to try to change consumer behavior, change business practices, reduce food waste linked to to unclear and misunderstood date labels. We want to know that what we do has an impact as well. Right. So we have done some preliminary studies in Switzerland and in the UK before just to analyze what would be theoretically the impact of making such changes on products. But we will do actually a full scale impact assessment over the months to come in all the countries where this campaign has launched. They'll take quite quite significant amount of time in 2022 to see what has changed, who has changed their behavior and to see you know why have these changes occur and has this really had an impact on food waste levels. So, story to tell you about that now because it hasn't started yet, but we very much look forward to the results and to hopefully be able to tell a story of impacts on consumer behavior and on associated food waste levels. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Kristoff. Many creative solutions there to reduce food loss and waste food labeling creating special shelves in the supermarket distributing surplus food through a mobile application to avoid that it goes to waste. And thank you for highlighting the problem of climate change and how food loss waste reduction addresses the issue. It's a very important message indeed. We're certainly empowered and inspired our listeners and we're looking forward to having you back at the some of our future conferences, tell us about the results and the findings of your of your studies. So thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Hi, everyone. Let me quickly share my screen. I believe everybody can see my screen at the moment. Hi again. It is my pleasure to be the introductory speaker of our panel. With star speakers from very inspiring organizations in our session titled the role of research and development and innovation and food loss and reduction. I would like to set the tone from a slightly higher level as many of us know and realize not just through the issue of food loss and waste but many others, many of the macro issues we're currently facing around the world have reached a stage that looks like this ugly knot. These have become issues that require a systemic level of thinking and also different methodologies ways of working in order to make significant progress towards towards the solutions. The next slide shows what type of a mindset and direction we need to be in if we are interested in leading a disruption in the way we approach our issues. It is from a project that I'm really fond of called project breakthrough, where it shows that only with the pursuit with pursuing exponential change and increase commitment through various different ways, we can reach breakthrough levels of progress. But so how do we get there that's one of the most important questions. I would like to lay out four important areas and methodologies that we need to pay attention more. We need to first make space for more destructive innovation and technologies. It is important to keep in our minds open towards opportunities that are being developed in terms of new technologies. We need to incorporate is new types of business models in making these technologies and innovations work. It is important that we change the way we look at our business models that the way we find solutions and the way we make our businesses sustainable. These are all interconnected. And third is, if these technologies coupled with the right business models are ought to work and are ought to scale for larger impact, forming unlikely partnerships is crucial which was the topic of our previous session actually. And finally, behavioral change. I added this as the last on purpose because, although it is an essential part in creating exponential change. It becomes the responsibility of all of us individuals, not just organizations so the savior food campaign in Turkey has served a pivotal role in creating behavior change for towards food loss and waste, since it has been introduced. And I'm excited to see how it, its effects will influence these other three areas that I mentioned earlier. But just coming back to the first three. It is when we make these three work together that we can, we can make progress towards issues such as food loss and waste reduction. So although the title of the session is our Indian innovation. I believe that it is important to highlight and pay attention to the business models and the partnerships some of our speakers have formed since they were founded. When we talk about partnerships and organizations that we as impact of Istanbul and our agri food platform, food back has been partnering up with since 2017 EIT food explains the dynamics of forming partnerships really well in this diagram that I'm just showing you informing valuable and impact making projects and initiatives it is essential for research, business and entrepreneurs to come together and collaborate. This graph graph also gives an important message, because it has put entrepreneurs at the center of the diagram, which signals that the work of entrepreneurs are central to making are in the initiatives work, and also disrupting the business actors as well in a in a positive way of course. This also shows where we as an organization come in as well. We as impact of Istanbul and also as our agri food platform, food back. What we do as impact up is, we are one of the world's largest networks focused on building entrepreneurial communities with an aim to create impact the tangible solutions to the world's most pressing pressing issues. So what we do is we basically bring together various different actors, which mainly includes entrepreneurs as it's mentioned in our in our mission statement. And we try to make these innovations go to a go to a more impactful level and scales, and through with this mission what we try to implement is various different projects and various different activities so that we can support the work of entrepreneurs. And this through various different projects with the support of our donors, and one of these projects that came across was in 2017 called food back, which is a collaboration and innovation platform that supports disruptive agri food innovations food loss and waste has become a big focus of ours for the past two years, especially within within food back as well. But what food back basically does is we have seen the needs of entrepreneurs, which as you can see on the left side. The collaboration is a big one. Basically, what I mentioned earlier is unlikely forming unlikely partnerships, but also access to finance and also the right forming the right network networks and mentoring. And then what we saw when we were forming again food back was companies are in need of fast innovation access to new ideas and technologies, and also collaboration. We have brought together the two needs of stakeholders from two sides, and we have formed food back so that we can create this matchmaking platform, where we can bring the needs of both sides together and I actually create the systemic change that I mentioned earlier in my presentation. So here you can see some of our activities that we work throughout the year. We have basically three different ways we implement in order to foster innovation and R&D through entrepreneurship, and the main part that we support the works of entrepreneurs from much earlier stage from, you know, where the idea where the entrepreneur is at idea stage and where the entrepreneur is, you know, growing their initiative is through entrepreneurship capacity development programs and these we run on a regular basis in various different issues in our impact up network but within food back we solely focus on agri-food related issues within Turkey. And we do this we implement these through the support of our donors. And with a lot of our activities that you see here are actually agri-food ecosystem from an entrepreneur's perspective has grown a lot and you'll see a quick sector look in Turkey in this quick slide. But as you can see we didn't put the idea stage ones startups here that much these are mostly the developed ones but you can see there's a lot of enterprises, especially on the right bottom right hand side with regards to surplus and waste management. And there are a lot of organizations that are working on this issue, but we don't find this slide to be as robust as it needs to be. You know, just like I mentioned earlier in my presentation for our issues to be resolved by especially 2030. So what we're trying to do is grow the number of organizations in this slide with some of our activities throughout the year. I would like to obviously provide some examples. So I would like to give the word to some of our speakers, which we have for right after me. And I know some of them pretty close to the end the other ones I'm excited to hear what they have to talk about. So who basically the organizations coming up after me is the first one is Nanomik, who they develop and produce micro-encapsulated biopesticides for food and agricultural products that protects them against food spoilage without changing their quality. And the second organization is Wholesurplus, who was established with the vision of investing in the development of food banking system and technological solutions to food waste with sustainable financial model. And Wholesurplus also helps its stakeholders to profit from their social work as well. And our third organization, Sunam of Sabanji University, is a world-class nanotechnology research and application center housing high-caliber researchers and infrastructure for multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary nanotechnology R&D studies offering global nanotechnological solutions to societal challenges, creating socioeconomic added value through commercialization of research results. And finally, LeanPath is on a mission to make food waste prevention and measurement of every day practice in the world's kitchens. They invented and automated food wasting tracking technology in 2004 and provide, they provide a complete food waste prevention solution, including data collection tools, cloud-based analytics, and expert coaching. I would like to thank you for listening to me and hopefully you enjoyed some of our next speakers coming up. Thank you, Aishe. This is truly inspiring and since you've already done my part of the job for me, I will just introduce our next speaker, Busse Berber-Orchan, co-founder and CEO of Nanomic. Please give the floor to yours. Thank you, Victoria. I'm sharing my screen firstly. Okay, I think you can see now. We are not making any progress in the process. The waste is being produced in different stages of the food waste that is being distributed from the bottom to the top. According to the data, in the group that is located within our country, especially in the previous part, there is a total of 17% of waste. Later on, in the depolarization stage of the waste, this is the total of 10% of the waste. There are 20% of the packaging assistance. There are 15% of the waste channels. And in the last section, there are 12% of the waste. As you can see, the highest amount of waste here can be used as an assistance for the waste and the packaging assistance. Especially when we look at the waste that is being produced in these two areas, the main waste is the harmful soil and pathogens. And when we look at the waste that is being produced in the food waste chain again, we see that this area is defined as 300 billion dollars. Today, in fact, it is a very long time since synthetic pesticides have been used to prevent the formation of these waste. However, especially in recent times, we often hear about the harmful effects of pesticides. Every year, about 25 million farmers are affected by these harmful pesticides. In fact, we can say that pesticides are one of the effects of pesticides. However, in addition to this, it is more dangerous to face an incident. Just like the drainage problem in the same antibiotics, it has now begun to develop drainage damage against pesticides. This also means that in the near future, as it is in the same health, we can see pandemics in the field, that similar events in the equator region have slowly begun to be heard. And when all these harmful substances were actually found in front of us, the European Union used all synthetic pesticides for up to 2030. It set a goal to reduce it by 150%. As far as pesticides are concerned, we were able to balance the amount of food. After that, I would like to talk a little about what will be done in the future. In fact, in order to answer this question, we first tried to understand the defense mechanisms of the plants. And in this study, we saw that some plants really produce special molecules to protect themselves and their close surroundings. And these special molecules only protect themselves and their close surroundings. They create a natural balance against these pathogens. However, there is a very important obstacle in the development of these molecules, such as heat, sunlight, and oxidation. They are affected by a lot of vitamins and they are degraded in a short time. This is actually due to the fact that these molecules can only be affected for a few hours. What we do as a plant is that these molecules are used to protect themselves for many years and to prevent synthetic pesticides from spreading. We developed this technology by taking these molecules and absorbing them into small plastic bags and providing them with only the necessary materials. And with the technology we developed, we aimed to provide protection in different stages from the field to the table. In the market, we have developed and sold products for four different stages. If we need to talk about these products briefly, our first product is MiCox. MiCox is a product used in the product groups that are very sensitive to diseases such as stomach, stomach, and stomach. This product group, which we have done together with the right partners, has achieved about 90% success on the right side. In addition to this, we are actually trying to ensure that we do not change our habits while providing a solution to the problem. For this reason, we have provided a similar application to the future plastic bags. In addition to this, the most important thing is that synthetic pesticides have a worse effect on the quality of the products. And when we look at the products that are normally seen in the pictures, synthetic fungicides and other products, when the quality is lower than the quality of the products, MiCox has much higher quality products compared to the previous product. This is especially similar to the previous products, and it is now back to us with about a week of pre-firmware. Another product group is BioExtent. BioExtent is a product that is especially problematic when it comes to depots against diseases. It is a product that is used in products such as the UZUM, Narenciya, Kiraz, and Şehitaylı. BioExtent is a product that has a lower quality power. While this product is being used, it is applied in the way that the process companies are accustomed to. When it is added to the washing water that is used in the process, these capsules open up on the fruits and vegetables and create a natural protection by removing harmful microorganisms and fertilizers. This product can provide a reform for over 5 days on synthetic protectors. It is soft like a special dye. In Narenciya products, this reform-reverse is a month and again, it can cover the reform-reverse that comes out up to 2 months in some UZUM types. What is this reform-reverse? In fact, it is sold in a way that is much lower than the value of many products that are very low in terms of reform-reverse. In addition, we have created new market shares in the product we have increased to reform-reverse. We have created new markets. In this way, we also include customers. Another product is BioFlux. BioFlux is a product used in increasing the reform of green-yellow products that are particularly sensitive to disease. In fact, it is used as a cleaning product and we sell it in two different forms in order to be an industrial product. Today, we use this green-yellow product as a cleaning agent and as a chlorine agent and it is a product that has been developed as a chlorine agent. It provides about 8-day reform-reverse on the chlorine. Moreover, since we have made this product in a lower and shorter period of time, we are taking extra advantage of the fact that it can be used. In terms of nano-micro products, we have also made 150 independent tests in terms of product development and product efficiency. We are still continuing to do this. Right now, we have a B2B partnership on the 30th and we can protect food on about 25,000 tons with these partnerships. We are in a global and local platform to protect food. We have been the owner of this product on the 20th. In fact, we have developed a technology that has been developed to move forward. I mentioned the advantages of this technology, but in fact, we are currently in the market as an alternative to a harmful product that affects a lot of meat in the world. And because of this, we have an important effect on climate change and climate change. According to research done by the European Climate Change Platform, the use of nano-micro products instead of chemical detectors is carried out in front of a carbon emission of about 65 tons. We are actually doing all of this work with a multidisciplinary team and it is possible to create innovative solutions for a more sustainable world. It is possible to provide fast market integration with our new products and we continue to receive different support from the industry. We believe that we are in the right place to be one of the important players of the rising green revolution. And we invite you to be a part of this revolution to grow our business together. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Archan. Our next speaker will present a truly holistic surplus management system designed in line with the food use, not loss or waste hierarchy. So please welcome Karaj Bichert, head of marketing at Whole Surplus to learn more. And I would like to remind you, the speakers, to please keep to your allotted speaking time as we are already running very much over. Thank you very much, Victoria. I will try my best to be as quick as possible. So let me share my screen first. I hope that everyone can see the slides. So first of all, thank you very much for having us here. So Fazlagda is a social startup which is aiming to create value out of unsolved inventories of the companies. So actually the journey of the company has started way back in 2015 with the idea of creating a technology-based solution for the sustainable development goals of United Nations. So the two co-founders, Arda and Toljai, as you can see here, have focused on four of these SDGs and with a special focus on 12.3 preventing food waste and food loss and they tried to create a digital infrastructure to solve this problem. So Fazlagda's vision was to create a positive impact in three areas, which are economical, environmental and social areas, while they provide food waste reduction solutions. So why are these three angles so important? Because food waste means a cost at the same time. For example, in Turkey annual food waste is cost around $30 billion for our economy. On the other hand, we know that 8% of the total carbon emission is caused by the food wasted and at the other end around 16 million people in Turkey are living, unfortunately, under hunger threshold. So if you just prevent the food waste, you are actually creating solutions for all of these three angles. So what is the approach of the company is providing a holistic surplus management solution which answers all the stages of the food recovery hierarchy. As most of you already know, the hierarchy says that the most preferred stage is activated top, which is source reduction. If you cannot reduce at the source, then you feed hungry people, if not you feed animals, if not you are using the food for industrial users composting. And the least preferred version is landfill. For example, we do not provide a solution for the landfill or the last stage, but we are having solutions for all of the other stages. So as mentioned at the very beginning we are a technology-based company, so we are providing an AI-based and artificial intelligent based technology platform, which is enabling our partners to manage their surplus very quickly and with full trust. So what does this technology do is actually the platform can identify and categorize the surplus food according to the condition of the food uploaded to the system. And then it manages all the recovery process options according to the food recovery hierarchy. At the same time you can just track the food in a real-time manner and you can also get an analysis of the waste streams to improve to reduce your surplus. So coming back to the food recovery hierarchy I will be sharing our product portfolio now, which are answering different needs at the different stages. So as you can see at the source reduction stage we have five different solutions which are data analytics, sensor T, sensor S, I will be explaining all of them, B2B Marketplace and a new application which we call FASLA. The second stage is donation where actually FASLA has started kick-off everything like four years ago and we are also providing solutions for feeding animals and composting and energy generation. So starting with the first one actually we are working with a lot of partners and while we are managing their surplus food, as you may guess there is a data generated from this management. We can see which products are becoming surplus for a certain company at which conditions these products are. So accordingly we can provide them data analytics which includes both operational and financial data for our partners and this will actually give the empowerment to our partners to drive their business with a less surplus food by doing some optimizations in their production or logistics etc. So performance tracking and real time screening is available with this data analytics and every partner of FASLA can utilize this data analytics to drive their business. So coming to one of our new products it is called sensor T and actually this is like a cable which can be positioned in Horeca and retailers and with this digital based management system you can easily with no effort track your waste food waste generated in your kitchen or at your factory very easily. So all you need to do is just showing the waste to the screen and throwing it to the garbage it is and then the data is stored at the and with this data you can easily monitor what kind of food waste you are generating and you can come up with solutions to decrease this food waste. So another IOT product is sensor S and this is like a cold chain tracking system so with sensor S these can be used by food manufacturers and also retailers. The temperature and humidity can be measured in a real time manner and if the temperature or humidity is increasing above the limit that you don't want to it is given at that time so you can just check control and take necessary actions to avoid any breakage in the cold chain so all the information is locked and shared with the relevant people so that no food waste is generated because of the cold chain breakage here. Apart from that another product is a B2B marketplace we call it Market Fuzz Lagada this is actually for secondary sales this is a clearance marketplace as you can think of for the products that maybe you have overproduced or you couldn't sell in the market this is an alternative sales channel some extra additional financial income for your products with a secondary sales at the same time of course you are decreasing the food waste with your surplus products sales which can be used in other kitchens at the same time so we as Fuzz Lagada are providing all the options delivery and payment options in this platform so the buyers and sellers can buy or sell their products in this market so this is suitable for all food manufacturers retailers, wholesalers and again hotels, restaurants and catering companies and another solution at the source reduction stage is our application, Fuzz Lagada was actually providing B2B solutions but Fuzz Lagada application is the first B2C solution so we have already heard about two good to go, this is a similar model restaurants and cafes etc are just listing their surplus food here and the consumers can buy this surplus food with a discount which creates an extra financial income for the Horeca partners and also a price advantage for the consumers, they bought together also prevent food waste the food which was produced by the Horeca channel and most probably would be going to the garbage is set in this model so feeding hungry people the donation part is the part that we have started our journey with so we are providing this solution for all of our partners and we are also running partnerships with several municipalities here so this part is creating both environmental and also a social positive impact that's why we love this solution very much so we are working with over 80 food banks for donation and the companies that are donating their food are getting a tax benefit and also the PR possibility for their companies in that way and those in need are receiving donation with this module but not all of the food is suitable for human consumption if it is not then a secondary solution can be here is making this food an animal feed so again here we are working with five animal feed producers and we are just providing a selling module for our partners their food can be bought to become animal feed here and last but not least we also have a biogas solution at the bottom of our biogas production can be provided as well so we are working with three different recycling centers and again our partners can sell their surplus food to become biogas so very simply how it works on the left hand side you see our product surplus owners be a retailer producer or distributor and on the right hand side you see the receivers they can be food banks or a animal feed production plant or a biogas facility so simply the companies upload their surplus inventory product to our system and the system surplus management system SMS we call it decides with its artificial intelligence at which stage the uploaded surplus inventory is belonging to accordingly we are just matching the surplus inventory the products with the right partner who offers the highest the best value for the product and also all the logistics and payment solutions are provided by Paz Lagoda to his partners and this is a digital infrastructure all the legal documents are on the system they can be tracked anytime and archived as well so in this way the players on the left hand side can just make the best value out of their surplus inventory by sending their products to the players on the right hand side please try to wrap up but we're out of time I am okay so very quickly our operations in Turkey includes around 30 cities with a lot of retailers producers or a car and distributors and also food banks etc and in the last four years we have said around 20 K tons of food which means that we have prevented 63 K tons of carbon emission and maybe one of the most important is we have provided 1.5 people with carbon emission which created a social impact so till now we have run over 50 K transactions in our system and we are looking forward to increase these numbers much more so thank you very much for listening over to you thank you very much Koray thank you now let's hear what science has to say the use of Mencelolu from nanotechnology research and application center at the Sabancı University is going to present us with impressive nanotechnology that is helping prevent food loss and waste please join us and let's hear Dr Mencelolu thank you very much Victoria and now time really passed so much and we are back very late and we are losing also the listener and I will try to keep my talk in a short I will do my best to make it and I'm going to talk today about how to engineer the nanoscience and nanomaterials to prevent the food loss in post harvesting and packaging and I'm working at Sabancı University and also Sunum one of the research center at Sabancı University I will start with actually what is nanoscience and nanoengineering when you make the materials in nanosize means you show the very different properties there's novel and significantly improved physical and chemical biological properties then instead of their mess properties they do have quantum properties so to manipulate them first generation or second generation of nanomaterials to play them to manipulate them to engineer them to use in different industry that is our main research area at Sabancı University and we do apply those knowledge into the agriculture and food sector to prevent the loss as well as the waste and when you're using those nanosize materials you obtain the nanosize coatings and that gives you the less materials you use and more efficient and effective function you will get and with that I will give little information on that because many speakers have already mentioned that the fungal infestation or mold growth there are some common reasons for food waste and food loss during the cost harvest and at the same time those type of microorganisms can cause the food sickness as well that's why it needs to be controlled during the washing or during the serving of materials and then again the anomic bush animation that the common cost harvesting treatment they use unsustainable and excessive use of the chemicals which is also unwanted due to their toxin and other problem and also the synthetic fungicides using cost harvest process they bend and also prohibit it so that's why new methodologies and strategies they require and with that the new methodology different than the anomic technology we do have permanent sanitation for cost harvest storage areas and we try to reduce the microbial degradation of the products actually this is the sponsored project sponsored by TubeTec and done with the Istanbul University and I will little share the information about those whatever we've done actually during this project this is the simple chemicals which has some cationic functionality which shows the antimicrobial white spectrum of antimicrobial property and this is the metroxysilane groups which we utilize them a lot in nano synthesizing the nano size materials they can apply this is the water based materials we can apply them by using dipping spray and folding them any type at room temperature they form the cross link structures like this and those cross link structures the material they shows the durability and this carpentral ammonium compounds they act as a contact kill mechanism and they are permanent they brought spectrum they can be effective against the fungi bacteria and yeast and algae and they are non-taxic actually the chemicals are made out of the biobased materials and it's non-taxic water based something is the non-migration when you apply them on the surface they do not migrate onto the food or other stuff and it's easy to apply even it's effective on the air disinfection when we talk about the post harvesting process and you need to look at the bundle solution which we have to make every each item on the antimicrobial from the personal hygiene to field hygiene or air quality so that chemicals can be applied all those surfaces and without having any migration to the environment so they fix on the surface and they will prevent the material or the microorganism cannot proliferate that so they are objective in this project to reduce the microorganism that cause the risk on the food and also the contributor responsible consumption because you will use less chemicals you will apply once and will last longer like a year or so and there is not much there will be less lower maintenance cost in the production as well these are the some results we done this test or this validation of this product in cherry producers and you all know that the cherries they carry a lot of fungi coming from the field and back in time they were using some antifungal agents during the washing liquid and then at the end all those antifungal agents were staying on the crude and their ban so this when you caught with the washing line and all the water piping and etc with this antifungal material they were reducing the load on the cherries actually when you make the comparative studies with the antifungal water surface with the non-coated surface you already reduced 98% of the fungal load on the wash water and the same thing that we tested the cherries with the regular process you can reduce down about 50% but in the antifungal process we can reduce down 99% on the fungi on the cherries and also they done this residual analysis test on the cherries and there is no residue means that the fungi takes on the surface and they will stay there but at the same time they reduce the microbial load on the system and that is also used in the air the sanitization on the air channels and also the filters and everything and that reduced also the fungal load is about 90% 95% even that storage area efficient since we also caught the surface with the wall surface and everywhere then the microorganism could not find any place to proliferate so that is the indirect protection but it is very effective protection on the system and the same chemicals we applied for the storage test like a tomato we applied that material onto the corrugated box and we stored it at 11 degrees on 20 days and test been done in the Uldar University Phytopathology lab and it turned out to be also those dependent of those chemicals undercoating and then you see that the non-coated boxes that the tomatoes already get rancid and some water also disrupt the packaging material you can see in the picture then you have high dose and that the tomato is touching on the surface and non-touching surface they are still very good and they increase the shelf life of the tomatoes about 20 days and these are the microbial studies there and when we look at all tomatoes they have some microorganisms on it and they store them in the control they still the microorganism a lot and those bees about the reduction of that microorganism about 60% and also the water getting the rotted tomato they prevent the 88% when it touched on the surface of course by using the same chemicals with the separating papers you can cover the 90%, 99% the other research actually we do a lot very similar to maybe the nanomics technology we use the natural nanotubes incorporate them into the packaging materials and with those nanotubes we can introduce many different functionality materials and in the food packaging actually functional food packaging we need to have antimicrobial for the meat food or some carbon dioxide emitters for fish and chicken food or some anti-oxidant oxygen scavenger or ethylene scavenger we need those functionality to increase the shelf life of the product but it is not easy to all these chemicals incorporate into the polymer film packaging film but to incorporate them into the packaging film we use the HNT nanotubes those are natural nanotubes and it's about 100 nanometers in diameters and the 500 nanometers in length so those are the nanotubes with the high length and diameter ratio this is important for the plastic production plastic film production because when you have this nanosize materials we increase the mechanical strength of the plastic materials for plastic film means you can make the low gauging of the thin film for the packaging and HNTs they have a low density and the density of hydroxyl groups are there compatible with the problem is good and they are good reinforcing agent by using these nanotubes we can incorporate them some antimicrobial agent this could be natural or synthetic one those are inherently absorbent they can capture the ethylene and carbon dioxide they show anti-static they show barrier properties even though you can put some phase changing materials inside and make the frozen foods they can carry much longer time and they give the mechanical strength couple of different examples I will show here we just make the packaging with the banana just in the first day you will see the upper row and then after 8 days banana gets answered and when you have packed with this HNT HNT containing plastic film you will see that the bananas are very fresh then we packed the tomato and we checked the tomato fumes initial fumes of the mechanical strength of the tomato is about 20 kg per centimeter but when it is not protected in 10 days they drop down 75% I hate to interrupt but we are over time I am just getting end so these are the example for increasing the shelf life of the metals the strawberries they lose the water they have the barrier properties from the film so it is the same time trying to convince that technology can help you a lot by using less chemicals and the very high functionality with that I would like to thank you for your attention and if you have any question I would be happy to answer but I would like to thank you for the e-mail address to me by e-mail as well thank you Dr. Mintulow thank you very much for this interesting presentation now we are going to close this session with a presentation from Steve Bin Vice President of Food Waste Prevention the hospitality sector is getting back on its feet please let me welcome Mr. Finn thank you Victoria glad to be here and I think you will call up my slides in advance then yes there we go super great thank you hello everyone Steve Finn here from LeanPath thank you so much for being here I am pleased to be here on this great panel today on this really important day such an important day such an important time for humanity as we seek to drive transformational change in the global food system and LeanPath we believe it is important to talk about prevention of food waste or source reduction as you saw earlier and by preventing the occurrence of food waste we avoid all of the social and environmental impacts associated with the production and distribution of food that would otherwise get a waste and we free up resources to recourse solutions like hunger next slide please I apologize colleagues are working on it food waste prevention is so important in the food service sector where we operate think scale and impact these are really big operations that collectively serve hundreds of millions of meals around the globe daily they have large volume they have deep supply chains so in terms of financial costs first in food service operations food waste can total between 4 and 10% of food purchases so if your annual food brand is 1 million euro your operation can be losing between 40,000 and 100,000 euro each year and of course you are contributing to extensive environmental and social costs along the way next slide please so further food service operations face a number of challenges especially in this pandemic area many of which seem out of their control food costs are rising sharply as our labor costs it is very hard to get labor in this environment it has led to many new operating formats and requirements that increase costs as well COVID disruptions have further challenged operators as they lack the historic data to guide production levels in this environment too so and beyond all of these environments we know that consumers increasingly expect food service operators to act responsibly to reduce their food waste next slide please but the really good news for food service operations around the world is that they can take control of their food waste including food management and behavior change LeanPath helps food service organizations to cut costs to save 2 to 8% on food purchases to save labor no longer preparing all of that food that would otherwise get a waste and saving utilities costs as well we also help them engage their staff to help retain and recruit workers who want to be a part of an organization with purpose and to be more resilient with data analytics to guide the efficiency of operations next slide please moving on in our development we came to a key realization that food waste was the elephant in the kitchen it's a very large but often unseen and not discussed so in many cases excessive waste has been tolerated due to a culture of abundance around food and in other cases food waste just hasn't been a safe point of discussion so LeanPath changes all of that by making food waste the elephant visible so that it can be measured analyzed and most importantly prevented going forward now I want to emphasize that term prevention because at LeanPath we seek to move the conversation and the action up the hierarchy so we help organizations change to prevent the occurrence of food waste in the first place and again prevention maximizes that financial environmental and social benefit and with that up front prevention focus in place we can also help enable downstream recovery efforts as well with excess food that is on hand today next slide it's worth noting that food waste prevention has been challenging for some operations for several reasons right for some food waste has been very difficult to measure or it's been difficult to obtain and analyze good data or it's simply been hard to get staff members engaged in the process next slide so LeanPath changes all that we have a proven process in place to prevent food waste from occurring in food service operations involving tracking all cases of food waste measuring against an established baseline data analytics from the data and the imagery that we provide and operational and behavioral changes from all the data and the insights that we provide and capture so as you can see we have a suite of products designed and customized to fit the needs of kitchens of all sizes they range from lightweight scales to bench stop units with digital photography to floor scales as well next slide so LeanPath provides an impact with the processing of each of these food waste transaction staff can immediately see the financial impact of that waste which we extrapolate over the cost of a year of course of a year and the environmental impact of that waste as well in terms of emissions and water and that really resonates with food service workers who gives the staff perspective on the impact that they can have next slide so we leverage the power of data as well data from the sites food waste transactions are automatically analyzed and presented with really vivid graphics and extensive drill down capability so operators can slice and dice their data in myriad ways to glean actionable insights such as viewing top wasted food items top reason codes for their waste trends in the site's waste ongoing savings across the organization versus baseline and roll ups across sites as well next slide so we amplify that data with the power of pictures because as we all know a picture is worth a thousand words so with certain models we provide digital images which are stored with the data from each of those transactions not really allows deeper insights as to why the food was wasted and further it helps us to identify trading opportunities such as knife skills to reduce trim waste or changes in production sizes for example next slide so the key our process raises awareness of food waste throughout the operation making it visible we supplement our analytics program with report features that help operators quickly hone in on areas for change enabling actions to reduce food waste today and prevent it going forward next slide so in terms of action features we provide instant alerts that allow chefs to receive emails for certain waste scenarios so they can have a conversation and intervene in real time to perhaps repurpose that food or make changes to prevent overproduction in the future we have daily and weekly reports that allow chefs to keep the team focused on particular food waste items and trends and our tracker functionality continually reinforces awareness of food waste in the operation next slide so much more work is obviously focused on pre-consumer waste or kitchen waste we also have a post-consumer product called Lean Path Spark that allows clients to engage in food waste productions and food waste production as well and that provides data on plate waste levels as well as educational messaging to spur patrons to change their individual behavior and waste less so it helps with the holistic solution focus next slide so wrapping up here overall our process is well proven it leads to measurable results we typically cut waste by 50% or more we allow clients to save 2-8% on food purchases we also have an expert coaching program with culinary expertise so we can really talk chef to chef which is really important and we have award winning customer success programs from our history of just hard-earned learnings throughout the sector next slide so to sum all this up we're on a mission at Lean Path we seek to ensure a sustainable future for all by making food waste preventable every day practice in the world's kitchens it's completely in line with our status as a B corporation we're operating in over 40 countries around the world we've prevented over 30 million kilos of food waste from occurring since 2014 alone and we're cutting waste inspiring clients and changing cultures to really make food waste prevention a part of organizational DNA so please join us in this really important effort to cut food waste around the globe and meet the target 12.3 goal and there's no better day to get started on that than September 29th the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss in Waste thank you very much thanks very much Steve for this very inspirational presentation and especially on this day of food loss and waste awareness being a communication person myself it's a great pleasure to open the last session that will highlight the importance of awareness raising to support and to change our behavior Miss Rukhshan is Demir Cifci Connect District Director at Izmir province Directorate of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forest of Turkey is going to present the national campaign in Turkey which is being co-implemented by the ministry together with FAO Miss Cifci you have the floor the presentation will be done in Turkish so please use the interpretation for those who need it thank you okay sorry about this I know that Rukhshan needed to leave for five minutes but she is going to come back and we are probably going to skip the Q&A session since we're really over time and go straight to closing remarks which would be provided by Robert Ottenbeek agro industry officer and LTO of the project at FAO Robert you have the floor in the meantime can everybody hear me yes okay well I wish to thank everybody very much for participating and attending this conference as you have seen it has been a highly technical meeting that we had today that was intentionally and the purpose is that through these presentations from different angles addressing the food loss and waste issue that you like to inspire other people who are listening to this to this conference to undertake action and to see which of these solutions for food loss and waste production would apply in their case in their country and in their sub sectors and most of all that we also inspire people to seek the collaboration with other stakeholders in their country or in their sub-sector where they are operating in order to tackle the problem collaboratively and if you can do so together with these stakeholders that would be great because we as FAO as an international organization we can directly engage in all activities ourselves but we definitely would be highly interested to be informed about it and to provide any guidance and support or information as required for this purpose we have also established and already some time ago in the community of practice where many of you are already a member of but that is also a platform where you can find in order to roll out ideas and to implement direct action because that is the strategic approach that we take is the private sector in the value chains who can reduce food loss and waste at any significant scale and finally I would like to say that we are going to repeat this next year but then at a bit larger scale geographically at a regional level where also Eastern Europe and European Union will be involved and then hopefully we will be able again to organize a physical event in a conference hall in Ankara or in Istanbul where all the speakers come together like it used to be before the corona pandemic paralyzed the world in that respect to some extent and then we are going to further expand on the organizational and the managerial and the technical approaches to food loss and waste reduction so in due time you will all receive information and invitations for that conference then finally I just would like to thank everybody who has been engaged in the organization of this conference, the speakers, the organizers it's a long list of names which I will not mention all of them and I would like to say special thanks to Oksana Sapiga who has been the designer of the agenda and the contents of the agenda for this conference but of course you couldn't do that without the help of all the other team members in the FEO and in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Turkey so it has been a long morning for most of us I wish you all a pleasant continuation of the day and we hope to receive your queries and questions and anything by email or in the chat box and we will all respond to it and hopefully we can give a very good follow up to this conference. Thank you all and have a nice rest of the day. Bye bye.