Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement Minister Perrance Shiri

By Farai Mabeza

ZIMBABWE is prioritising staple and horticultural crops in the fight against post-harvest losses, a top government official has said.
This is being done under an African Union (AU) project called Capacity to increase AU member countries to design and implement food loss reduction policies, strategies, and programmes.
The director for economics and markets in the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement, Clemence Bwenje, told a post-harvest management meeting in Harare last week that post-harvest losses were a real threat to national food and nutrition security.
“They represent a loss in consumption, loss in revenue and loss of profitability for farmers. In Zimbabwe we have prioritised two cereal staple commodities (maize and sorghum), two horticultural commodities (tomatoes and bananas) and milk. The Government of Zimbabwe through the AU is supposed to report progress on the reduction of post-harvest losses on these agricultural commodities. The post-harvest loss monitoring and evaluation framework that will be presented will help to monitor post-harvest loss reduction in these commodities in line with the Malabo Agenda 2025 goals,” Bwenje said.
Accurate estimates of the magnitude of losses are still lacking. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has estimated yearly global quantitative food losses in sub-Saharan Africa at roughly 20 percent for cereals, 40-50 percent for root crops, fruits and vegetables, 27 percent for oilseeds, meat and milk and 33 percent for fish.
In Zimbabwe, post-grain harvest losses remain a major concern to smallholder farmers. Post-harvest losses, estimated at 20 to 30 percent in storage alone, can be as high as 40 percent when including field, transportation, handling and processing losses.
The task of transforming Africa’s agriculture into a modern and dynamic sector is a complex one, faced with a number of challenges, including high post-harvest and food losses.
FAO notes that reduction of food losses and a related increase in value addition and marketing activities, are consistent with the emerging consensus among African leaders that investment in agriculture should go beyond improvements in farm productivity to address the post-harvest sector and complementary areas of agribusiness and agro-industry.
“Post-harvest losses are a factor that exacerbates food insecurity and they occur along the post-harvest chain, reducing food availability and real income for farmers. This especially affects the poor, mainly because they devote a high percentage of their disposable income to staple foods,” FAO assistant representative in Zimbabwe responsible for programmes, David Mfote, said.
The loss of harvested maize and other food commodities can be qualitative or quantitative. Quantitative losses are easy to determine and report since they constitute a physical reduction in the marketable volume and can be easily measured.
Qualitative losses refer to deterioration of nutritional quality, safety or grade. Qualitative loss data is hardly ever reported. The levels of qualitative losses due to aflatoxin contamination, although not reported, have dire long-term effects on health.
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