Possibilities For Reduction of Food Loss and Waste: the Case Study of Lithuania‘S Producer Cooperatives

The aim of this study is to propose organisational system providing a possibility to various size sea buckthorn producer farms to work together by merging into cooperatives and producer groups in order to improve production and logistics management and reduce food loss and waste along the entire supply chain. A semi-structured interview method was applied with respect to Lithuania‘s cooperatives and producer groups from neighbouring countries. Inductive reasoning method has been applied for the data analysis. The Research revealed that establishment of producer groups is directly related to the development of cooperatives with a better production and logistics management with a consequently reduction of food loss and waste and an increase of farmer profitability. The scale measuring the dependent variable contained self-reported items and such self-reports may be biased estimates of true behaviour.