Background and focus of the 3th AEW
Global food loss and waste generate annually about 8% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Globally, about 1.3 billion tons per year of food produced gets lost or wasted. In developing countries over 40% of the food losses occur at postharvest stage (FAO, 2011) due to poor handling after harvest.
The project postharvest management in Sub-Saharan Africa (PHM-SSA), financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), and piloted in Benin and Mozambique promotes better handling and storing of harvests, and finding solutions that can be scaled out. Likewise, many other players in Sub-Saharan Africa are implementing isolated interventions to reduce postharvest losses at farm level, for diverse crops and with various methods. Consequently, PHM is getting increased attention going by the participation of the recently organised All Africa conference on postharvest management (PHM) in Nairobi early this year. Presumably, the various players have experiences to share, thus the African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS), will convene a side event during the 3rd AFAAS extension week in Durban, South Africa, which will provide a unique opportunity to share, discuss, and compile a set of proven approaches and recommendations to promoting good technologies and practices on postharvest management. Methodologically, it will provide an interactive discussion platform on PHM. The side event will contribute to the sub-theme “Scalable CSA technologies and innovations” of the AFAAS extension week.
Main Objective
To take advantage of the participation of PHM-RAS experts, institutions and other agricultural value chain actors at the extension week to share, disseminate and institutionalise good approaches, tools and practices to sustainable promotion of technologies and practices on PHM.
Specific Objective
- To share new visual and audio tools and materials being used to disseminate good practices in PHM by different stakeholders.
- To share about business models that can be implemented to promote PHM technologies/innovations;
- To share the cost-benefit analyses of good grain storage technologies;
- To advocate for and create awareness on post-harvest management among extensionists.
Outputs
The expected outputs of the side event:
- Information shared on approaches, tools and materials for PHM;
- Synergies with other PHM interventions created;
- Awareness on PHM enhanced within the AFAAS network.
Approach and Methodology
The PHM side event will feature the following:
- Networking prior, during and post event among PHM actors;
- World café and cinema environments;
- Plenary discussions;
- Knowledge exchange;
- Reflections and synthesis;
The results of the discussions will be disseminated through blogs and online platforms including the AFAAS VSNP, the global community of practice (CoP) on food loss and waste, twitter, facebook and whatsApp.