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Regional Training Course on the Measurement of Post-Harvest Losses in Asia and the Pacific









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    Regional Training Course on the Measurement of Post-Harvest Losses in Asia and the Pacific. Provisional Programme
    22-24 October 2018, Chiba, Japan
    2019
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    Book (stand-alone)
    Guidelines on the measurement of harvest and post-harvest losses
    Estimation of crop harvest and post-harvest losses in Malawi. Maize, rice and groundnuts. Field test report
    2020
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    A study was conducted in two Agriculture Development District (ADDs) of Malawi, Salima and Lilongwe, to pilot a new methodology for estimating on-farm harvest and post-harvest losses. The study was carried-out with technical support from the Global strategy to improve agricultural and rural statistics (GSARS) of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO). This pilot exercise principally aimed at strengthening the capacity of Malawi in generating reliable estimates on post-harvest losses. The data collection was carried out using a household questionnaire which was specifically developed for this exercise. The analysis of the results showed that a significant amount of farm produce is lost during harvesting, followed by threshing. The study also highlighted that on-time harvesting and use of chemicals are considered by farmers as the most effective strategies for preventing on-farm losses, even though farmers are not always in a position to implement these strategies. The authors recommend that a solid baseline on harvest and post-harvest losses be established by replicating on a larger scale this pilot survey for three consecutive years, to account for weather variation and other exogenous factors which may affect losses. The survey would benefit from the integration with existing country-wide data collection systems such as the Agricultural production estimates survey (APES) to ensure low operational costs and sustainability. It is also recommended that Computer assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) should be introduced for future exercises to improve on data quality and timeliness.
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    Book (stand-alone)
    Guidelines on the measurement of harvest and post-harvest losses
    Estimation of maize harvest and post-harvest losses in Zimbabwe. Field test report
    2020
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    In the framework of the Global strategy to improve agriculture and rural statistics (GSARS), FAO provided technical assistance to Zimbabwe on the measurement of harvest and post-harvest losses through sample surveys. The technical assistance was provided in the form of a pilot study on estimating harvest and post-harvest losses for major crops in the Makonde district in the communal and A1 farming sectors. The survey focused on maize and sorghum and included the measurement of on-farm losses. The survey captured losses through interviews of farmers as well as through physical measurements. The number of usable data points for sorghum were too few to provide reliable production and loss estimates, hence the results presented in this report mostly refer to maize. The results show that 5.2 percent of grain is lost at harvest and 3.8 percent lost at drying. The comparison of the loss estimates according to the measurement method used shows mixed results; in A1 farming sectors, farmers’ own loss estimates tend to be lower than physical measurement, while the opposite is evidenced in the communal sector (except for drying). Timely harvesting was used by most farmers to limit losses, followed by stoking when harvesting and the use of chemicals to protect crops from pest infestations during storage.

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