Reducing Post-Harvest Losses through Better Gender Integration

Apr 29, 2020 | Maria Jones, Ismat Ara Begum, Monjurul Alam, C.K. Saha, and Abdul Awal
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Post-harvest management is an important, although less visible, step in ensuring a community’s food security. Poor post-harvest management reduces both the quantity and quality of food available for consumption undermining all four pillars of food security — availability, access, utilization and stability. A food secure community is resilient to external shocks and threats, and good post-harvest management can bolster that resilience.

Globally, women smallholder farmers are responsible for multiple post-harvest activities such as threshing, drying, winnowing, storage, cleaning, processing and marketing. At the household level, women smallholder farmers are specifically responsible for storing grains after harvest for household consumption and as seeds. They traditionally store grains in earthen pots, bamboo baskets, and other storage structures which are not insect-, pest- or moisture-proof. In fact, research shows that 50-60 percent of the post-harvest losses occur at the storage stage, resulting in loss of both grain quantity and grain quality. These losses affect food available for consumption and impact sale prices.

While multiple improved post-harvest handling technologies exist, smallholder farmers (both male and female) face barriers to adoption. Specifically, women smallholder farmers face barriers such as technology design and access to it (income, credit, land). Limited access to information to learn about and purchase improved technologies is another barrier that women face. Furthermore, women also face intra-household barriers that hinder them from participating in a household’s decision to adopt new technologies. To make an impact in reducing post-harvest losses, organizations and programs need to consider gender dimensions of post-harvest technologies, and address gendered barriers.