Impact of rice harvest loss by mechanization or outsourcing: Comparison of specialized and part-time farmers

Abstract

One-third of the world's food is lost and wasted each year, making reducing food loss and waste one of the promising ways to ensure global food security. This study conducts a comparative analysis of the differences among the factors affecting rice harvest loss of specialized and part-time farmers. Data collected from 1 106 farmers in China were analysed using Tobit regression. The results indicated the following: i) The average rice harvest loss rate of part-time farmers is higher than that of specialized farmers. ii) Among the variables considered, most factors not only increase the loss of part-time and non-rice specialized farmers but also reduce the loss of rice specialized farmers. iii) The use of combine harvesters and the purchase of outsourcing services increases the loss of part-time and non-rice specialized farmers but can reduce the loss of rice specialized farmers. iv) In addition to weather and pests, planting area, terrain conditions, operating attitude, and labour shortage also affect the loss. These findings are valuable to understand how the loss occurs and the differences between specialized and part-time farmers, which will help develop targeted interventions to reduce the loss.

From Quantifying to Managing Food Loss in the Agri-Food Industry Supply Chain

“…We have seen that, in the first years of scientific development, there was a more quantitative vision, where the valuation of food losses was very common [24][25][26]; the driving theme was the cluster "food waste" [46], closely related to "food loss" [48]; and the food supply chain was already present in a continuous search for the quantification of loss at the different levels of the supply chain [32]. In addition, there are many studies from the point of view of "industrial ecology" that attempt to provide solutions from the environmental profile of the supply chain [72], estimating greenhouse gas emissions related to food loss and waste [29,32,42,45,70,73] or modelling food loss in life cycle assessment [48]. Every dollar invested in reducing food loss saves USD 14 in operating costs [57].…”

“…The concepts of "shelf life" [64,65,67,68] or "greenhouse gas emissions" [66,67,69,70] were part of the challenges faced by companies and public institutions in the face of the need to reduce food loss already announced in the second period.…”

An Inverse Relationship between Farm Size and Rice Harvest Loss: Evidence from China

“…During manual harvesting, which is more delicate, the grain left in the field can be collected. The efficiency of mechanical harvesting is higher, but the machinery easily causes crop damage and leaves grain behind [31]. Meanwhile, working attitude is significantly negatively correlated with rice harvest losses.…”

Sustainable Food Consumption and Production in the 21st Century

“…To better understand cause and effect between MOC and production performance, the second objective of this study is to analyze the heterogeneous effects of MOC in different production phases. From the perspective of the production phase, rare studies examined the influence of MOC in the entire production process (Sun et al, 2018;Qu et al, 2021). Scholars may get contradictory results from investigating the impact of MOC in different production phases.…”