Let us mitigate challenges of post-harvest losses

Results from different research studies demonstrate that farmers loose up to 40 per cent of the harvest through PHL depending on the crop and geographical area. This has a negative impact on their income, livelihood and production incentives.Achieving food security is a high priority for our country.

In this regard, the government has formulated and currently implementing relevant strategies and programmes under the Agricultural

Sector Development Strategy (ASDS). The ASDS provides a policy and strategic forum for investment by both private and public sector. If such investment is made at different levels of the value chain, namely at storage, processing, appropriate packaging, transportation and marketing, it will result in significant

reductions of PHL currently happening along the food chain.
In the same vein, the government has been called upon to come up with better mechanisms to help in reducing post-harvest losses to at least ten per cent from the current 50 per cent.
The Team Leader for Yieldwise Tanzania from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), Jones Govereh, said in Dar es Salaam recently when speaking at the Post-Harvest Loss Innovation workshop.

The regional meeting was organised by AGRA in collaboration with GKI (Global Knowledge Initiatives) under the Rockefeller Foundation.

The AGRA official explained that post-harvest loss has increased from 20 per cent to 30 per cent in 2014 but the target is to reduce it to ten per cent to 15 per cent in 2017.

Also, the post-harvest technology should be freely taxed as this will help smallholder farmers to achieve healthier food due to the fact that taxes imposed leave the burden on them. It is also hard to handle that burden because of the farmers’ low income level.

The problem of food loss and waste has negative impacts far beyond food insecurity.
Records have it that one third of all available food – enough to feed the world’s 1.2 billion hungry or undernourished people - never makes it from the farm to table. With two billion more people expected on the planet by 2050, this is unsustainable.

To overcome this problem, AGRA in collaboration with GKI (Global knowledge Initiatives) under the Rockefeller Foundation is requesting the government to cut off the 17.5 per cent of VAT on the post-harvest food and 25 per cent of import duty tax on cocoons so that costs of production and post-harvest loss will be reduced to increase profits and the growth of business, growth of the economy as well as increasing food provision to people to eliminate hunger.

We are therefore calling for the need for a new policy change concerning technological innovation that would facilitate the achievements of AGRA’s four main components which are market demands, aggregating farmers around aggregation centres, access to finance to support working capital and distributing post-harvest technology and supporting adoption of technologies which are hermetic bags, cocoons and hermetic-cyclones.