ADDRESSING POST-HARVEST LOSSES IN ARTISANAL FISHERIES: SOME KEY CONSIDERATIONS

摘要

While artisanal fisheries are said to incur high post-harvest losses, with data from 15% to 75% (FAO, Mills, Moes) commonly quoted, in many cases the key factors behind these figures have not been meaningfully clarified. This makes planning and implementation of effective loss reduction strategies difficult, and risks wasting already scarce development resources.Reducing post-harvest losses may be addressed through technical or non-technical measures. Solutions might be within or outside the fisheries sector and therefore an effective loss reduction strategy rests upon a systematic loss assessment and a holisticapproach to identification and planning of the interventions. This requires that all stakeholders (government officers, development practitioners, policy-makers and researchers, etc.) have a common understanding of these considerations that are elaborated on in this paper. These are mainly the terminology about the type of loss, the stepwise approach to quantifying the losses, the participatory approach, the issue of quality and spoilage within post-harvest loss assessment, the non-existence of universal established solutions to post-harvest losses, paying attention to existing coping strategies and to the socio-economic context within the fisheries.