Reducing Postharvest Losses
In the OIC Member Countries
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Quantification
Member Countries need help to locate and quantify postharvest losses. For some
commodities, methods are easily available (e.g. APHLIS), but for others, for example livestock,
no standard approach has ever been developed. Development of baseline data on postharvest
losses is needed for strategic commodities, and this should be done using a standard approach
to allow target setting and country/commodity comparison to take place.
Recommendation 1: To set up national postharvest loss reduction coordination
committees with the specific aim of identifying, prioritising and sharing postharvest losses
data and practices across a range of strategic commodities.
Resources
Investments are needed to reduce postharvest losses and to upgrade existing value chains at
several levels. Research on postharvest issues is very sparse among OIC Member Countries.
The link between investment in all kinds of infrastructure and the benefits that can be gained
from reduced postharvest losses is poorly understood. Engagement with the private sector to
promote investment in reduced losses is particularly weak.
Recommendation 2: To promote a consistency of approach, an OIC wide postharvest losses
reduction coordination body should be initiated with the aim of using consistent methods,
sharing best practice and promoting system wide efforts.
Capacity
The range of knowledge about postharvest losses and how to address them is extremely
variable across OIC Members Countries and commodities. However, examples of good practice
and recent research do exist (e.g., fisheries in Indonesia, cassava in Nigeria and wheat in
Egypt).
Recommendation 3: To promote capacity building and sharing among OIC Member
Countries through a series of commodity-by-commodity ‘best practice’ workshops leading to
a future OIC postharvest loss reduction symposium.
Scope
This analysis has shown that even expert stakeholders struggle to understand the difference
between physical and economic losses, let along adding some of the other types of loss that are
known to exist such and nutritional and environmental. Addressing this weakness would be a
task for the postharvest losses coordination body (recommendation 2 above).
Engagement of value chain actors
Literature, case studies and surveys show that important constraints to the uptake of new
practices that reduce postharvest losses relate to fully engaging actors along and across the
different target value chains. Good practice seems to be associated with strong engagement,
for example, where industries fully commit and farmers associations fully buy-in, such as the
early development of hermetic bags for grain in some parts of Africa. In countries where there
are existing and dynamic commodity organisations (e.g., the Ugandan dairy sector), advocacy
draws strategic resources into postharvest loss reduction.
Recommendation 4 : To facilitate local, national and, potentially, regional multi-
stakeholder commodity platforms.