Chapter 2. Minimizing post-harvest losses: gaps in post-harvest intervention

In developing countries, post-harvest losses (PHL), which represent the quantitative, qualitative, nutritional, or economic loss of food commodities from harvesting to consumption, remain an important challenge and affect the food security of millions of people. Despite increased attention to PHL, a structural change in PHL is yet to be achieved. This is partly because PHL is a multidimensional challenge with multiple direct and indirect causes linked to the socioeconomic context. This chapter highlights notable gapsin post-harvest interventionsregarding technology, management, finance, capacity building, innovations, and weak data availability. The importance of sustainable business models is also demonstrated as post-harvest technologies need to be profitable in the long term to facilitate adoption and scalability. This chapter also stresses the importance of using a system approach to achieve a sustainable reduction of losses, involving stakeholders from the beginning through a value chain approach. This approach enables the definition of a common vision, identification of gaps from different perspectives, collaborative creation and design of inclusive interventions, and promotion of collaboration, coordination and co-learning. Strong public and private sector investments are needed to achieve a sustainable reduction of PHL. This chapter concludes by reiterating there are no universal solutions to addressing PHL, and the technologies promoted must be adapted to the local context or sourced locally.