Teferra Tadesse Fikre
School of Nutrition, Food Science and Technology, Hawassa University College of Agriculture, P. O. Box 05, Ethiopia.
Heliyon. 2022 Mar 8;8(3):e09077. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e09077. eCollection 2022 Mar.
This research was designed to estimate the food security and economic burdens of postharvest losses of important food and cash crops produced in Ethiopia. Data of food production, food values and consumption patterns as well as the number of severely and moderately food insecure persons were obtained from FAOSTAT database for Ethiopia. The food security implications of the postharvest losses in the country showed that a volume of crops that could feed over 23 million citizens could be saved with proper postharvest management. The economic meaning of the losses of major food and cash crops was 1.2 billion US dollars per annum, which literally is 10% of the average annual national budget of the country for the years 2018-2022. If the losses could be managed to be lower by 50%, it could have meaningfully contributed to the food and nutrition security as well as the GDP of the country. The approach used in the current analysis could be either adopted to generate clear data for awareness creation community education or it could be developed into a more robust model to estimate annual losses or food security and economic gain potentials.
本研究旨在评估埃塞俄比亚主要粮食作物和经济作物收获后损失造成的粮食安全问题及经济负担。粮食产量、粮食价值、消费模式以及严重和中度粮食不安全人口数量的数据均取自埃塞俄比亚的联合国粮食及农业组织统计数据库。该国收获后损失对粮食安全的影响表明，通过适当的收获后管理，可挽救足以养活超过2300万公民的粮食产量。主要粮食作物和经济作物损失的经济意义为每年12亿美元，这实际上占该国2018 - 2022年平均年度国家预算的10%。如果能将损失降低50%，将对该国的粮食和营养安全以及国内生产总值产生重大贡献。当前分析中使用的方法既可以用来生成清晰的数据以开展提高认识的社区教育，也可以发展成为一个更强大的模型，用于估算年度损失或粮食安全及经济收益潜力。
