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Approach to evaluation of Losses

Post-harvest Loss Evaluation

“Loss evaluation” of grain during the post-harvest process is commonly considered to include the following:

To define what the losses during the post-harvest process are, and to measure them.
To study the cause of such losses, devise countermeasures to reduce (improve) losses, and implement them.

Improving pre-harvest technology and agricultural materials aims at an absolute increase of production, while that of post-harvest processes never involves an absolute increment. On top of that, the improvement of post-harvest processes usually requires solution of social and economic problems, and therefore many countries have not yet been able to initiate such improvement, although they are willing to do so. Since we now know we cannot expect a continuous increase of cultivating area and yield forever in most developing countries, it is necessary for us to begin reducing the loss during the post-harvest processes where we can.

Post-harvest Losses

Post-harvest losses consist of two types. One is the relative loss, which may vary depending on the viewpoint of those who handle rice, such as rice farmers, reapers, middlemen in each village, rice millers, warehousemen, milled rice merchants, local government authority, central government policy-makers, and so on; and the other is the absolute loss, which simply means the reduction of the absolute volume of rice for consumption.

The former includes the case of ownership changing by means of theft or some other illegal means, which is a loss for the rightful owner of the rice but does not mean a reduction of the volume of rice. When necessary, the purpose of using rice itself may change. In this section, however, “loss evaluation” does not cover the relative loss but focuses only on the absolute loss; namely, the loss of grain as food material (quantitative loss) that takes place during the post-harvest processes, and the loss of value as food (qualitative loss).