Investment in food loss reduction helps increase access to food, reduces food prices for consumers and improves economic returns to farmers and other value chain actors.  Post-harvest losses, in particular, exacerbate food and nutrition insecurity as they occur throughout the postharvest chain, reducing food availability and real income for farmers.

As such, investment in agriculture should go beyond improvements in on-farm productivity and address the post-harvest sector.  

FAO Zimbabwe Assistant Representative (Programmes) David Mfote, said a number of challenges, including high post-harvest and food losses, were hindering the transformation Africa’s agriculture into a modern and dynamic sector.

“As a consequence, agricultural supply chains are inefficient and poorly equipped to cope with a dynamic and growing urban food demand on the continent,” said Mfote. “This especially affects the poor, mainly because they devote a high percentage of their disposable income to staple foods,” he added.

Mfote was speaking at a validation workshop for an Africa Union supported project on increasing capacity of member states to design and implement food loss reduction policies, strategies, and programs. FAO is implementing this project which is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation through AU.

The project is also being implemented in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In Zimbabwe the project was launched was launched in May 2017 and concludes at the end of June this year.

Director of economics and markets in the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement, Clemence Bwenje, underlined the importance of reducing post-harvest losses as well as increasing productivity.

“Post-harvest food losses are a real threat to household and national food and nutrition security. They represent a loss in consumption, loss in revenue and loss of profitability for farmers” said Bwenje

The goal of the food waste management project is to support AU member achieve the Malabo Declaration’s aim of halving post-harvest losses by 2025 as well as Sustainable Development Goal  12 target of reducing food losses along production and supply chains.

In Zimbabwe, the project is a follow up to a number of loss assessment studies on selected commodities and supply chains (maize, sorghum, bananas, tomatoes, Leafy vegetables) already conducted in the country. These studies were undertaken to come up with reliable findings that could be used as evidence to inform policy and development of strategies and programmes for reducing food losses.

FAO estimates yearly global quantitative food losses in Sub-Saharan Africa at roughly 20% for cereals, 40-50% for root crops, fruits and vegetables, 27% for oilseeds, meat and milk, and 33% for fish.