Reducing Postharvest Losses
In the OIC Member Countries
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ONLINE SURVEY OF POSTHARVEST LOSSES IN THE OIC 3.
A questionnaire (survey monkey) was developed with spans questions relating to OIC Member
Country and commodity experience (7 food commodities including cereals, fish and seafood
products, fruits and vegetables, meat and meat products, milk and dairy products, and roots
and tubers), to questions about physical and economic losses in the value chains to how to
mitigate them. The questionnaire was sent to 400 experts globally who were selected from
contact lists and google searches. A total of 68 responded which was a good response for a
survey monkey questionnaire but not all completed the questionnaire in full. Data analysis
was conducted on the limited data collected. While the number of responses (59) is not
statistically valid for the crops and countries and there is no means to validating or verifying
the figures we have received, we identified the following: firstly new information about
physical and economic losses in the value chains has been gained. A qualitative understanding
of the causes of losses, mitigation of these losses, and constraints has been developed for each
of the groups of commodities. However, here are large gaps in knowledge for many countries
and products where no responses have been received.
We have excluded the reported economic losses which were requested as a percentage. The
reason is that the majority of the respondents reported economic losses that mirrored the
physical losses. However, we know from other work (Naziri et al., 2014) that economic losses
are often different from physical losses; for example a 10% physical loss of a product at the
consumer end of the value chain results in a much higher economic loss than an equivalent
loss at the farm end of the value chain where the product has a much lower value.
3.1. Introduction
The survey was sent to nearly 400 experts who we perceived would have experience of
postharvest issues in the OIC countries. The methodology is given in the introduction.
3.2. Results
The analysis is as follows and is by responses to asked in the questionnaire
Countries respondents had experience with postharvest value chain activities
indicates that the majority of respondents had experience of postharvest work in the
following top ten countries being Uganda, Nigeria, Benin, Mozambique, Bangladesh, Indonesia,
Senegal, Togo, Burkina Faso and Egypt. There were 22 countries where no experience was
reported and this suggests a potential gap is general expertise.