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Transforming food systems: From reducing waste to co-creating sustainable value chains​​​​​​​​​​

Bringing together research, policy, industry and community to co-create lean, circular systems for resilient futures.

4 June 2026
Men sorting boxes of apples

Connecting farmers, policymakers, supermarkets, SMEs, and communities is key to building sustainable food systems.

Article by Adam Green, freelance journalist.

In 2024, an estimated 2.3 billion people experienced moderate to severe food insecurity, a rise of 336 million compared to pre-pandemic figures, while chronic undernutrition affected more than 150 million children under the age of five. These statistics are doubly tragic because there is plenty of food globally, but much is lost and spoiled in dysfunctional supply chains. Waste undermines progress in tackling climate change, as the industry accounts for around a tenth of greenhouse gas emissions. The losses are particularly damaging in low-income countries, where economies and livelihoods are heavily dependent on agriculture and who often lack the data and infrastructure to understand where food is going to waste. 

Waste not, want not

  • Food loss and waste accounts for 8 to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions

  • Wasted food could provide 1.3 meals every day for everyone in the world impacted by hunger.

  • Global food waste costs are expected to hit $540 billion in 2026 alone.

Systems thinking and circular economy

Dr Sonal Choudhary, 125th Anniversary Chair and Professor of Sustainable and Resilient Futures at the University of Birmingham, studies how operations, supply chain management, circular business models, hybridising policy making and emerging technologies can be harnessed to build food systems that are both resilient and sustainable. "The biggest challenge I'm looking into is not just how to produce more, but how to make complex systems work better to deliver value for everyone," she says.

“Across the projects I have led, a common thread emerges: data, decision-making, and value chains remain deeply fragmented. My research is fundamentally about connecting these fragmented systems, moving beyond siloed and reductionist thinking, toward intelligent, resilient, and sustainable approaches that enable value co-creation across the whole chain.”

Increasing production alone misses the point. Food grown only to be lost or wasted represents a systemic failure of infrastructure, governance, and incentives. Drawing on circular economy principles and the 10R framework, her research moves the conversation beyond waste reduction toward waste prevention, interrogating why surplus and loss arise in the first place, and redesigning the systems, business models, and incentive structures that generate them. The true measure of success lies not in output, but in outcomes: resilience, nutrition, equity, and sustainability across the entire food system.

​​​The 10R circular economy framework

Refuse, Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Refurbish, Remanufacture, Repurpose, Recycle, Recover, represents a hierarchy of value preservation strategies, arranged from highest to lowest impact. Critically, the most powerful Rs sit at the beginning: preventing resource use and redesigning systems so that waste is never generated, rather than managing it after the fact. This shifts the policy and business focus from downstream waste treatment toward upstream system design, a distinction with profound implications for food, energy, and industrial value chains.​​​​​​

Rather than imposing top-down solutions, Professor Choudhary’s method maps entire systems, tracing where value is created, where it is lost, and how decisions travel across the chain. No single stakeholder sees the whole picture, but bringing multiple perspectives together helps identify where change is possible.

Managing change at a systems scale requires knowing where to implement innovations, especially when ​business​​es​​ focus ​​​on each ​​​individual ​​stakeholder and ​policy instruments tend to​ also​ be narrow and highly specific. "It's a combination of understanding technological innovations in the field, as well as social and socio-technical innovations emerging from communities, from different layers of policy, from SMEs and industries both large and small," Professor Choudhary explains. "Capturing all of those perspectives and imaginaries is really important before you put forward any technological solutions."

From data to decisions​

Data is fundamental to modern farming. “It’s all about information flowing at the right time, to the right place, to the right people,” Professor Choudhary argues. “Farmers need to know ​when to sow, ​harvest and sell crops on time, how to protect them from pests and diseases, and how to make decisions about what to grow next." This extends beyond the farm: supermarkets and other buyers also need reliable data to plan procurement and manage supply chains.

In the UK, formal contracts between farmers and retailers help ensure information is shared, enabling predictive analysis. By contrast, many countries in Asia and Africa lack these formal ​supply chain ​structures, which makes it difficult for buyers to predict what farmers will produce, when it will arrive, and at what quality. These uncertainties create challenges for all stakeholders. Improving data visibility, therefore, becomes a powerful incentive, enabling better forecasting, coordination, and decision-making across the system.

​​Working with over ​​​​​50​,000 farmers in India, Professor Choudhary has generated large-scale datasets on farming practices and experiences, empowering stakeholders to co-design solutions. These efforts have borne fruit across a range of projects and contexts. An app called e-Krishi, developed with the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture in Andhra Pradesh and Telangan​a​, helped reduce food loss and waste by bringing data to supply chains, ​enabling ​farmers ​to make decisions ​about staggered sowing and harvesting times.

Food system data is already enabling sophisticated ​​digital tools in the UK. Professor Choudhary and her colleagues have developed a dashboard that integrates multiple open-source datasets to model sustainability and health outcomes via ​​Healthy Soil, Healthy Food and Healthy People, funded by BBSRC. ​​​

Because we’ve been able to map out the different types of data needed to assess whether a food system is secure, sustainable or resilient, we now have a clearer picture of the data landscape.

Professor Sonal Choudhary, Professor of Sustainable and Resilient Futures

​​One scenario, recently presented at a parliamentary event in the House of Commons in April 2026, explores the impact of reducing red meat consumption by 50% while increasing plant-based protein by the same amount. The results map out the potential effects across land use, biodiversity, soil health, water resources, and carbon emissions. By testing different transition pathways against real-world data, the tool offers crucial insights for policymakers, with plans to expand its use to retailers.

​​In ​parallel​, the team is​​ developing a Food Data Hub. “Because we’ve been able to map out the different types of data needed to assess whether a food system is secure, sustainable or resilient, we now have a clearer picture of the data landscape,” says Professor Choudhary. The ultimate goal is to make this data both available and actionable.

Meeting local needs​: a place-based approach​

Once datasets from previously under-studied regions are available, we can identify context-specific challenges and tailor solutions to local needs. ​The nature of those challenges, however, varies enormously depending on where in the world you are looking and so must the solutions.​​

​​In the UK, the drive to reduce food waste has focused on improving established systems: enhancing food manufacturing through digital monitoring, inspection, and quality control. ​Professor​​ Choudhary has worked with ​​the ​​Food Standards Agency (FSA) to enhance the operational performance of food inspections and food safety​​. She has also worked with WWF-UK to design strategies for UK supermarkets and large food service providers to diversify protein sales in support of net zero targets, and now serves as one of three independent reviewers for Tesco PLC's WWF Better Baskets Campaign and associated sustainability claims on proteins.​​

​​​Where the UK challenge is largely one of optimising existing infrastructure, in many parts of the Global South the challenge is far more fundamental, building it in the first place. In India, the absence of end-to-end cold chain infrastructure means that 47% of food waste is fresh fruit and vegetables: losses that are entirely preventable with better cooling and digital systems.

​​Professor Choudhary led the ​TRANSSITioN (Transforming Cold Food Chains in India through Space Science and Technologies)​ project and the STFC Food Network+, which brought together multidisciplinary stakeholders from the UK and India to evaluate pathways to sustainable cold food chain systems. Working with STFC RAL Space, she has co-developed a passive cooling solution for smallholder farmers that can cool produce without electricity across the supply chain. As Professor Choudhary explains, ​"Once the shelf-life or holding-life of the produce is increased by 48–72 hours, it will help farmers overcome distress selling​​​​"​.​​​ Large-scale field trials for this prototype are planned in the coming months.​

Beyond cold chains, Professor Choudhary has supported agroecological practices and sustainable agriculture adoption through innovative supply chain procurement models, including the development of organic food supply chains for one of the largest temples and pilgrimage sites in Odisha. Further initiatives include reviving under-utilised, nutritionally dense, and climate-resilient crops such as millets, and reimagining public food procurement for schools and hospitals in Odisha in collaboration with the state government. Taken together, this body of work demonstrates how a systems approach can transition fragmented physical and digital infrastructure toward integrated, intelligent, and policy-coherent decision-making, tailored, always, to the local context.​​​​​​

We don't just observe the system; we bring farmers, policymakers, supermarkets, SMEs, and communities to the same table to co-produce the knowledge needed to change it.

Professor Sonal Choudhary, Professor of Sustainable and Resilient Futures

​​​Across this portfolio of work, the University of Birmingham ​operates as a ​neutral convening space​, uniquely positioned to translate complex, fragmented data into evidence that is accessible and actionable across sectors.​​ "​We can sit across boundaries that other actors cannot easily cross​​​​,” ​​Professor Choudhary explains​​​​. That boundary-spanning ability is what allows systems thinking to move from concept to practice, from analysis into action. ​​​​“​​​​We don't just observe the system; we bring farmers, policymakers, supermarkets, SMEs, and communities to the same table to co-produce the knowledge needed to change it. At its best, academia becomes the connective tissue that holds fragmented actors, data, and decisions together, translating collective intelligence into solutions that are operationally viable, evidence-based, and owned by the people who need to implement them."​

This commitment to transdisciplinary, real-world impact is a defining feature of Birmingham's research culture, and it is precisely this environment that enables Professor Choudhary's work to move beyond academic insight toward the systemic, operational change that food, energy, and resource transitions urgently require.​​

Featured staff

  • Professor Sonal Choudhary

    125th Anniversary Chair

    Staff profile for Professor Sonal Choudhary, 125th Anniversary Chair and Professor of Sustainable and Resilient Futures based in the Birmingham Business School, College of Social Sciences, University of Birmingham.

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