Reducing Food Loss: Postharvest Handling Technologies and Systems Supporting Smallholder Farmers

Dear Colleagues,

Globally, there are more than 570 million smallholder farms (2 ha or less of land) that collectively represent around 75% of the world’s total agricultural land use. While smallholder farmers provide a vital contribution to the global food systems, especially in lesser developed countries, they also face the double burden of low productivity and high levels of postharvest loss. Low input or semi-intense production systems coupled with poor or inconsistent postharvest handling practice commonly limit farmer profitability and sustainability, leading to potentially wider adverse socioeconomic, human health, and environmental impacts.   

While there has been considerable effort to improve smallholder farm productivity, research to support better postharvest handling practice and reduce high levels of food loss has received relatively little attention. As a result, production-orientated interventions have helped to transform many smallholder farms, with postharvest loss remaining an ongoing challenge. Smallholder farmer postharvest systems have proven particularly difficult to remediate. Dynamic and transitional food systems often involving new crops, markets and transport logistics, as well as complex resistors and drivers to practice change, present postharvest researchers with a diverse range of issues and challenges. Not surprisingly, postharvest research in support of smallholder farmers has become far more transdisciplinary in nature, adopting a more systems-based approach, and integrated novel and emerging technologies and farmer support systems.

This Special Issue of Horticulturae aims to bring together research that supports smallholder farmer postharvest practice and reduce food loss, with a particular focus on lesser developed countries. We therefore encourage submissions of research articles, reviews, short notes, and opinion articles on smallholder farmer postharvest handling practice, novel technology and information platforms, quantification of postharvest loss, the resistors and drivers to postharvest practice change, and postharvest loss vulnerability and resilience.

Prof. Dr. Steven J.R. Underhill
Guest Editor

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• food loss
• postharvest
• smallholder farmers
• markets
• fruits
• vegetables
• root crops
• perishable crops