Impact of Post-Harvest Technologies on Post-Harvest Losses in Crops in Kenya: A Review

A significant portion of the produce often gets lost after harvest, which has dire consequences to food production in Kenya, especially among small-scale farmers. This paper discusses the effectiveness of different technologies in post-harvest to reduce losses on some of the most important crops like maize, mangoes, avocados, and cassava. Some of these technologies include hermetic storage bags, metal silos, mechanical shellers, coolbot™ cold storage, and the controlled atmosphere system. These technologies have remained very effective in cutting down on losses through spoilage while at the same time enhancing the quality of produce and increasing market access. For instance, hermetic storage bags brought down the losses of maize from 25% to under 4% as well as metal silos that allowed 96% protection of the grain. Mechanical shellers made the processing faster and eliminated the problem of broken grain and contamination while Coolbot™ systems increased the shelf life of mangoes from 12 to 40 days. However, the ability to adopt these innovations is grossly hampered by the high costs, infrastructural deficiencies, and low levels of technical know-how. Further, this study reveals that there is a need to support the uptake of these technologies through subsidies and capacity building for farmers as well as the development of infrastructure in rural areas to support the effective use of the technologies to improve food security, increase the income of farmers and improve sustainable agricultural growth in Kenya.