(i) High post-harvest losses of food lead to low incomes and productivity for farmers in Africa. Improved storage and handling techniques could help reduce these losses. (ii) The study tested several technologies: collapsible grain dryers, mechanized shelling, and hermetic bags. These technologies reduced drying and storage losses, increased grain quality, and reduced labor costs. (iii) Adoption of the technologies led to reductions in post-harvest losses of 15-84%, increases in additional food available per hectare of 2-45%, and savings in agricultural land use and higher incomes for farmers. Over 15,000 farmers have already benefited from using these improved post-harvest techniques.

1. Improved technologies for mitigating post-harvest food loss
Christopher Mutungi1,Kotu Bekele1 and Adebayo Abass1
1International Institute of Tropical Agriculture
Challenges & Study objective
 High postharvest (PH) losses leading to low farm productivity,
inefficient use of resources, less food and loss of income.
 Poor market quality of produce resulting in to low market prices.
 Drudgery in processing resulting in PH loss and low productivity.
 Less nutritious and safe food.
Main objective:
To study effects of improved PH handling and storage techniques on
reduction of food losses, and improvement of farmer conditions.
This poster is licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.
September 2018
We thank farmers and local partners in Africa RISING sites for their contributions to this work. We also acknowledge the
support of all donors which globally support the work of the CGIAR centers and their partners through their
contributions to the CGIAR system
Introduced technologies
(i) Collapsible Drier Case (CDC) for quicker/protected grain drying
(ii) Mechanized maize shelling (MS) for drudgery reduction
(iii) Hermetic bags (HS) for storage losses reduction
Evidence
• CDC improved grain quality by 30 – 44%, and reduced drying
losses by 63% from 67.3kg/ton to 24.7kg/ton.
• MS reduced cost of labour by 77%, resulted in labour efficiency
gain of 88%, improved grain quality by 55% and reduced grain
shelling and cleaning losses by 70% from ⁓68 to <20 kg/ ton.
• HS reduced storage losses by at least 85% (from 150 – 250kg/ton
to 22 – 40kg/ton), increased availability of food among net-buyer
households by 38%, and reduced their annual grain deficit by 17%.
Proposals for the future
Research
• Generate more evidence on nutritional, quality and
safety improvements, and impacts on environmental,
economic and social conditions;
• Integrate research on postharvest mechanization.
Scaling
• Since July 2018 commenced a strategic arrangement
with Islands of Peace to undertake backstopping research
while building PH capacity of the development partner to
reach > 4000 HH by 2021. Similar arrangement to be
done with others e. g. CRS.
Productivity Environment Economics Human
Reduction in
harvest
losses*
Agric. land
(ha) saved
Value
($/ha) of
food saved
Additional
food (kg/ha)
for HH
%change
CDC 15 - 22% 5-6% 2 - 5% 2 – 5%
MS 19 -24% 6-8% 3 - 7% 3 - 7%
HS 55 - 65% 8-17% 50 – 67 16 - 29%
CDC + MS 28 - 32% 8-11% 12 - 36% 5 - 12%
HS + MS 69 - 76% 19-28% 54 - 80% 19 - 40%
CDC + MS + HS 79 - 84% 21-32% 58 - 88% 22 - 45%
Approaches of taking the technologies to
scale
• Since 2014, over 15, 000 farmers and 4,000 HH reached directly in
Tanzania through Africa RISING- NAFAKA/ TUBOCHA program.
• Approach has been training lead farmers and extension officers
linking them to input suppliers, and partnering with local
institutions in research and training activities.
Fig 2. Insect damage of stored maize in two agro-ecologically different locations:
Long ≈ high altitude; Seloto ≈ mid-altitude; PP: woven polypropylene bag (control).
Majormycotoxins
Metabolitesfrom
Aflatoxinpathway
Fig 3. Mycotoxin incidence on stored maize in
two agro-ecologically different locations.
0
20
40
60
80
100
Long
Seloto
0
2
4
6
8
10
InsectdamageinPP(%w/w)
InsectdamageinPICS(%w/w)
0 12 24 0 12 24
Duration of storage (weeks)
Fig 4. Farmer willingness to
pay for technologies.
WTP for sheller
WTP for hermetic bagPercentage
0
30
60
90
Men
Women
US$
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
Men
women
Rental
service
Group
Purchase
Private
ownership
Bag useful
1 season
Bag useful
2 seasons
Control
(PP bag)
Fig 1. Improved technologies for grain processing, handling and storage
Table 1. Improvements in the various sustainable intensification domains
*The overall quantity losses magnitude along the entire chain without any intervention was 250– 400kg/ton
Partners