National Postharvest Management Strategy

The global food security challenge is straight forward: by 2050 the world must feed 9 billion people (Parfitt, Barthel, & Macnaughton,
2010). The demand for food will be 60 percent greater than it is today. The United Nations has set ending hunger, achieving
food security and improved nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture as the second of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) for the year 2030. While considerable attention is directed towards increasing food production by 50–70 percent to meet
this target, one important and complementary factor that is often forgotten is reducing food loss and food waste.

The third target under this goal (Target 12.3) calls for halving per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels
and reducing food losses along production and supply chains (including post-harvest losses) by 2030.

However, both approaches are necessary in any strategy to address food security and avoid hunger. Since the start of the
surging food and market prices in 2006, the risk of intermittent food shortage is becoming ever so more a reality. For low-income
food deficit countries such as Tanzania, factors such as persistent low agriculture production, difficulties of addressing the effect
of climate change and inability to handle the financial burden of high food prices in the context of limited access to credit are
all escalating the concerns for food insecurity. However, one underlying factor that seems to be often forgotten is the effect of
post-harvest losses on exacerbating food insecurity and income loss especially among small-scale farmers.