Reducing Postharvest Losses
In the OIC Member Countries
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value chains in developing countries have evolved to mitigate these risks of losses. A good
example is the widespread development across the humid tropics of fermentation, which costs
household labour but returns food that can be kept safe against future need. In general, the
imbalance in power along value chain, with farmers having less power over price than, say
traders or wholesalers, means that these risks and costs of mitigating losses are usually driven
down the primary producer and subsumed in the form of low farm-gate prices and high in-
chain margins (see for example Naziri and Bennett, 2014).
The location of loss within the postharvest chain also impacts upon its overall valuation and
can lead to some anomalous loss statistics. For example, a 10% physical loss that occurs at the
retail level can be valued differently from a similar scale of loss at the farm-gate. Price
increases along the chain so the cost of losses goes up. Theoretically, all kinds of loss costs are
built up along the chain, so policies that prevent losses at the consumption end will have
greater overall value than those reducing losses at the production end.
Beyond locating postharvest losses within and across value chains, the issue of who incurs the
loss remains largely unanswered. Very few food loss assessments have been gendered, though
considerable evidence supports the proposition that women bear the cost of them
disproportionately and that changes and innovations to the way losses are utilised can lead to
a transfer of value from one person to another (Abdulsalam-Saghir et al, 2015).
Two final, over-arching, issues need to be considered in any definition of postharvest losses.
Firstly, we now know that food losses are an important element of environmental costs. The
resources (e.g., fertilizer, labour, capital, seeds, energy and water) used in production,
transporting, processing and preservation of food are lost. It seems likely, although there is
not much empirical evidence to support it, that over-production is necessary to meet target
food and income needs. Secondly, we know that wasted food means less nutrition, and this
could be measured by simply multiplying the nutritional element by the total loss volume.
However, it is also likely that in-chain postharvest nutritional changes occur. Food that
perishes or becomes unsafe can, indeed, have a nutritional cost, particularly if it is consumed
by somebody who is already under-nourished or unwell. Some foods lose vitamins (e.g.,
processed and cooked flours of grains and legumes) or gain harmful ingredients (e.g.,
histamine in certain fish species and mycotoxins). These nutritional postharvest losses are, to
date, almost unmeasured.
For this study of postharvest losses we have chosen the following range and scope of definition
of postharvest losses:
 Quantitative and qualitative losses between the farm-gate and prior to retailing to the
consumer.
 Physical and economic losses measured by volume and value against the benchmark of
the highest likely opportunity cost relevant to the chain and circumstances of the
commodity.
We have, where possible, tried to elicit information on location, gender, poverty impact,
environmental costs and nutritional loss, but these are currently largely anecdotal.