Reducing Postharvest Losses
In the OIC Member Countries
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CONCLUSION
Progress in postharvest food loss assessment and reduction is in its infancy in OIC Member
Countries there remain many gaps in knowledge and information relating to the food groups of
interest in this study. Where progress has been made it is in measuring or estimating physical
losses only. There are a handful of studies that investigated economic losses and only one has
estimated nutritional losses and this was for cereals.
There is limited information for postharvest losses in the value chains in each of the OIC
Member Countries and losses appear to be similar in each group using a variety of approaches
being
a) Overview of literature,
b) Online survey of experts and
c) Case study of selected country/commodity groups.
The losses reported, however, do generally appear to be lower than the figures mention by the
FAO but sometimes higher. However, since these figures are estimates, there is no method to
determine who is correct without further research since this study is only a review with three
field visits where no postharvest loss research was undertaken.
More research is necessary but this is complex because for postharvest losses, the diversity of
products and value chains are vast and complex. Such research is also costly; for selecting
priority value chains when postharvest losses can have the greatest impact a policy decision
tree has been suggested here. This may help countries with limited resources and expertise to
make progress on postharvest losses that has the maximum impact according to national
priorities and goals in each OIC Member Country.
A total of six recommendations arose from this review and analysis. These covered a range of
issues from the establishment of national postharvest loss reduction coordination committees,
promote a consistency of approach among the OIC Member Countries where feasible,
encourage capacity building and sharing among the OIC Member Countries, facilitating local,
national and, potentially, regional multi-stakeholder commodity platforms, working with
financial service providers to investigate the possibility of developing specific postharvest loss
reduction instruments and to consider developing projects that specifically engage private
sector agribusiness actors in identifying and reducing postharvest losses.