Reducing Postharvest Losses
In the OIC Member Countries
8
INTRODUCTION
Background
Agriculture is an important, often crucial, economic driver for livelihoods in many of the
Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Member Countries, contributing 9% of GDP in 2013
and employing over 20% of the workforce (OIC, 2015). Therefore, the OIC Member Countries,
through its Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation (COMCEC), aim to
maximise the contribution of agriculture to socio-economic development. One key area for
concern is, in the face of rising populations, increased urbanisation, climate variability and
other long-term global trends, to address the aspect of overall food availability through
reducing food loss and waste.
Failure of all the food produced in the world to be consumed and to provide its full potential
for nutrition has long been recognized as an important brake on global food efficiency and
productivity1 (Hodges et al, 2011, World Bank, 2011). More recently, concerns about
population growth and the impact on the planet of unconstrained food losses and waste have
been heightened by the Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2015). The SDGs call for the
world to reduce per capita food waste by 50% by 2030.
Several recent studies have attempted to estimate the volume of food lost in the global supply
chain. The figure that is most pervasive tends to be that used by the Food and Agricultural
Organisation of the United Nations of one third of all food not reaching the final consumer
(Gustavsson et al., 2011). Whilst the method of measuring and valuing this loss can be
disputed, the factor cost in terms of nutrition, energy, water, labour, and capital of food being
produced and then not consumed is clearly vast. Consuming unsafe food could also be
included in this calculation and this would surely provide additional impetus for action by
policy makers.
Postharvest loss reduction offers the particular advantage of increasing food availability
without requiring additional land, water, labour and agricultural inputs for additional
production. Better postharvest management and the associated loss reduction will also help to
build resilience against current and future climate-related shocks, and reduce the need for
compensatory agricultural extensification, land use change and damage to environmental
services, including carbon sequestration.
There have been many different definition of postharvest food loss and waste and ways of
locating it within agricultural commodity value chains. One commonly adopted is that of the
World Resources Institute (WRI) which considers food loss to occur before products reach
consumers and food waste to be a near consumer issue of under-utilisation. COMCEC has
adopted the following definitions:
On-Farm losses: all losses during the agricultural production stage until completion of
harvesting.
Postharvest losses: food damage or degradation of food during different stages of the food
supply chain (both quantitative and qualitative); and,
1 Kissinger speech to the World Food Conference in Rome, 1974, quoted in Bourne, 1977:2