Postharvest losses and waste in developed and less developed countries: opportunities to improve resource use

Abstract

SUMMARYThis review compares and contrasts postharvest food losses (PHLs) and waste in developed countries (especially the USA and the UK) with those in less developed countries (LDCs), especially the case of cereals in sub-Saharan Africa. Reducing food losses offers an important way of increasing food availability without requiring additional production resources, and in LDCs it can contribute to rural development and poverty reduction by improving agribusiness livelihoods. The critical factors governing PHLs and food waste are mostly after the farm gate in developed countries but before the farm gate in LDCs. In the foreseeable future (e.g. up to 2030), the main drivers for reducing PHLs differ: in the developed world, they include consumer education campaigns, carefully targeted taxation and private and public sector partnerships sharing the responsibility for loss reduction. The LDCs’ drivers include more widespread education of farmers in the causes of PHLs; better infrastructure to connect smallholders to markets; more effective value chains that provide sufficient financial incentives at the producer level; opportunities to adopt collective marketing and better technologies supported by access to microcredit; and the public and private sectors sharing the investment costs and risks in market-orientated interventions.

Exploring Wheat Value Chain Focusing on Market Performance, Post-Harvest loss, and Supply Chain Management in Ethiopia: The Case of Arsi to Finfinnee Market Chain

“…Other factors influencing post-harvest losses of wheat in the area are related to logistics and infrastructure which include: storage facilities, distance to the nearest market place, conditions of the threshing process, and transportation conditions. These are expected results as in many studies (Parfitt et al, 2010;Harris & Lindblad, 1978;Hodges et al, 2011), poor logistics and infrastructure was contributing to high post-harvest losses. Therefore, this urges all stakeholders including the government to invest on public goods such as roads, establishment of market places near the producers, and enabling the chain actors for developing effective logistics system in the chain.…”

“…The third challenge is food loss and waste exacerbating the first two challenges. That is significant proportion of (estimates vary between 25%-40%) global food produced for human consumption was lost resulting in not only the losses of the food but also the losses of the scarce resources used to produce the food and also exposing the globe to additional economic and environmental costs to discard the lost food (Kummu et al, 2012;Godfray et al, 2010;Parfitt et al, 2010;Hodges et al, 2011;Rembold et al, 2011). In this study, significant portion of the wheat produced was lost across the supply chain.…”

Horticultural Loss Generated by Wholesalers: A Case Study of the Canning Vale Fruit and Vegetable Markets in Western Australia

“…Historically, two main approaches have been used to measure food loss. The first approach actually measures what has been lost, but this implies knowledge of what was present at the outset and this is usually not the case [35]. The second approach uses an Investigative Survey Research Approach (ISRA) to elicit loss estimates from those involved in the food supply chain [36].…”

Assessment of post-harvest losses of Warqe food products along the supply chain in Central Ethiopia

“…It is believed that reducing of wastage of food by improving post-harvest management is more crucial than the production of more food by extensive agriculture horizontal expansion. Hodges et al (2011) have also pointed out reducing food losses can increase food availability without requiring additional production resources and it can contribute to rural development and poverty reduction in less developed countries.…”