The Postharvest Education Foundation’s role in reducing postharvest losses

The Postharvest Education Foundation (PEF) was founded to address postharvest losses through education and training. Postharvest expertisewas identified as a key weakness in many developing countries. The PEF provides innovative programs that motivate and empower people to reduce food losses and waste. At the heart of the PEF is a structured e-learning program that provides a practical curriculum to address the causes of postharvest losses, as well as methods to minimize these losses for horticultural crops and staple foods. E-learning is an efficient and cost-effective way to reach interested parties globally, and keeping costs low enables PEF to train and mentor a large number of candidates in developing countries. The curriculum entails several assignments and participants can conduct these assignments on a crop of their choice, making the training relevant to their situations. Most of the 154 people who have completed the program have in turn trained hundreds of farmers, traders and marketers in their own regions inhandling fresh produce, crop storage, and food processing, thereby delivering maximum impact with minimum input. In addition to its e-learning program, the PEF provides education on improved technical practices along the postharvest chain and on extension education. This training includes a wide range of topics from measuring postharvestlosses to designing demonstrations on storage, pest management, packaging and temperature management, from building and using low cost cold storage systems to calculating return on investment of changes in handling practices. The PEF also provides advice on designing postharvest training and service centers. This information is available on the organization’s website. In addition, mentoring is provided through social media sites, continuing with the philosophy of providing distance education and training.