The Postharvest Education Foundation

Globally more than 800 million people suffer from hunger, while on other hand up to 50% of the total food produced is lost before reaching the consumer. 80% of the food supply in developing countries is provided by small landholders and cannot afford available advanced technologies to reduce these losses. Many low-cost technologies have been identified, but the missing element is intensive informal education and training platform for postharvest specialists to train farmers, traders, processors and marketers on how to choose and use these technologies in local communities.  The Postharvest Education Foundation (PEF) was created as a 501(c)3 non-profit to provide just this kind of training and specialized education in the rural USA and developing countries. We offer practical training programs and learning platforms for low resource audiences with cost-effective solutions, tools and demonstrations on best practices for postharvest handling, improved packaging and storage technologies, simple processing practices and marketing options. If PEF should win the prize, we will be able to expand our current outreach efforts and be able to work with many more young professionals around the world and launch new Postharvest Training and Services Centers in African and South Asian countries.

Rural experience program was part of my horticulture degree and during that period I had first had experience of how huge quantities of fruit and vegetables face losses at every step of supply chain. This has intrigued me to learn more about postharvest management and ways to reduce losses. Following my pursuit, I enrolled for e-learning program conducted by The Postharvest Education Foundation (PEF) and learned a lot about different concepts. I am presently working voluntarily as President-Elect for the same organization and ready to begin my role as President from May 2021. PEF was created in 2011 with the primary goal to tackle food loss issues in developing countries by intensive informal specialty education. Our team is dedicated to the organization’s approach to training local postharvest specialists through an innovative mentor guided e-learning programs, conducting workshops and supplying them with postharvest tools. Till date, PEF has trained 178 people as postharvest specialists in 34 countries with limited resources funded by private donations. Training programs has helped several young graduates like me, from different countries to become postharvest specialists. Our long-term vision is to design and launch Postharvest Training and Services Centers in developing countries in Africa and South Asia.

It is estimated that globally about 30 % of the total foods produced are damaged or lost during the harvest, postharvest handling, during storage, on the journey from farm to market or in the home. Besides, poor sanitation, contamination and aflatoxins can cause food safety and serious health issues. In some developing nations, depending upon the commodity, these losses can extend more than 50 %. These food losses not only contribute to the reduction of farmer incomes but also the wastage of land, water and energy resources used for food production and distribution causing global pollution. It reduces access to high-quality nutritious foods and can result in increased food and nutritional insecurity. The world population is estimated to cross 9 billion by 2050 and if we continue on this path, food losses will likely become even higher, and it will be difficult to feed the increasing population. Through our organization we are building technical capacity by designing and supporting training centers, offering practical training programs, long-term mentoring and learning platforms for low resource audiences with cost-effective solutions, tools and demonstrations on best practices for postharvest handling, improved packaging and storage technologies, simple processing practices and marketing options. 

Our proposed solution to reduce food losses is through capacity building by unlocking the postharvest resources and expanding our current e-learning based program to reach 250 participants each year and to add a live closing workshop for all participants. Even before pandemic struck the in-person training, our organization has been providing e-learning to reach a wider audience quickly and efficiently. Our enhanced e-learning program will benefit the participants directly turning them into postharvest specialists, through intensive training and they will be supplied with necessary resources along with constant expert mentoring to implement their training programs to reduce food losses for their local communities - including small farmers, producer cooperatives, women's groups, village-scale food processors, traders and marketers. These programs proved to impart essential knowledge to participants about improved practices and cost-effective technologies such as evaporative cooling, hermetic storage and solar drying, which immediately earn benefits to them, both financially and socially. We have also proposed a unique concept of ‘Postharvest Training and Service Centers’ in rural areas, which is a one-stop for training, packaging, storage, live demonstrations of tools, retail and consultancy.

More than 800 million people are suffering from hunger in the world, while on another hand a significant proportion of food produced for consumption is lost before reaching the consumer. Depending upon the commodity and handling practices the losses can reach more than 40 % and, in some cases, up to 100 %. The world population is estimated to cross 9 billion by 2050 and the ability of the available arable land and natural resources to provide sufficient and safe food to the growing population will become threatened. The postharvest loss reduction is increasingly being quoted as a sustainable means to reduce global hunger and malnutrition and reduce carbon emissions. The PEF’s mission is to train the trainers to create a cadre of well-trained postharvest professionals through a convenient and relevant e-learning course. These trained postharvest specialists will further train different agriculture stakeholders and would initiate a chain reaction of knowledge transfer. These programs will impart essential knowledge about improved practices and cost-effective technologies. In this way, the postharvest losses will be reduced which means efficient utilization of resource inputs in agriculture production, improved food security, earnings and livelihoods of stakeholders throughout the food supply chain.