Reducing Postharvest Losses
In the OIC Member Countries
10
approach adopted was to ask individual commodity experts to review losses globally and in
OIC Member Countries from the perspective of the commodity cluster they were responsible
for.
The literature review revealed wide-ranging deficiencies in the information available and
quality of postharvest loss data. For postharvest losses in general and for all commodity
groups studied, with the possible exception of grains, data on losses largely was founded on
secondary sources (e.g. not through actual measurement but by asking experts and
aggregating the results by known measures of agricultural output). The literature review also
demonstrated that the existing research and grey literature is patchy. By this we mean that
some OIC Member Countries have more literature available than others. For example, there is
nothing openly available on postharvest losses for any commodity from Azerbaijan, but much
for Uganda. The picture for literature by commodity is similar: information on postharvest
losses in the meat sector was very limited globally, but much research is available on cereals.
A lot of literature is unpublished or not available publically (e.g. “grey”). Where case studies
were conducted with in-country visits, this demonstrated that more in-depth research could
reveal grey literature not available to a desk study. It is also possible that some literature was
over-looked because it has not been published in English.
On-line survey of key informants
An online survey for collecting data on postharvest losses was conducted. The aim of this
survey was to identify and gather information/opinion from known expert at the country and
commodity levels. NRI (Natural Resources Institute) selected a sample of 400 key informants
across the 57 OIC Member States and globally across the range of commodities being studied.
These key informants were identified through a range of sources, including the FAO Save Food
members, recent attendants at the 1st Global Postharvest Losses Congress in Rome, and
through NRI’s extensive historical contacts in the field through the NRI Postharvest Loss
Reduction Centre.
Experts were identified at national, regional and international levels. In some cases experts
covered more than one commodity group. Every effort was made to find experts from a range
of backgrounds including: researchers, non-government representatives, international
organisations, the private sector and Government.
The survey instrument was applied on-line using “Survey Monkey” and consisted of a range of
questions and requests for estimates of losses and where these might occur in the chain of
supply (a summary of the survey instrument is at Annex 1). The questionnaire contained 182
individual response fields grouped into a number of areas as follows:
Group 1: Country and commodity focus and expertise of the respondent. These questions
located the country coverage of the respondent and the specific commodities where they have
expertise or opinion.
Group 2: Commodity value chain stages and typology of products. These questions clarified
the different stages of the commodity value chain and the typology of transformation occurring
postharvest.
Group 3: Estimates (%) of volume and value loss by commodity and stage of transformation.
These questions asked experts to provide estimates of the amount and kind of losses at each
transformation stage and aimed to highlight areas where losses are high. Respondents were