Lessons Learned from the Case Study

Sufficient focus on cereal postharvest loss reduction is unlikely to happen unless combined into a well-resourced, recognised and supported ‘improved cereal postharvest management’ programme. To be effective this programme needs to be long-term and contain the following elements:

Metrics and postharvest system – clearer understanding of what amount of postharvest losses are occurring at the different activity stages along the different and rapidly evolving cereal supply chains in Egypt, and why and which actors (farmers, transporters, traders, millers, government offices, gender etc.) and enabling factors (e.g. regulations, policies) need to drive changes in order to reduce losses, and what incentives need to exist for them to do so.

Capacity strengthening of key actors in the cereal postharvest systems – this will involve: Information – targeted awareness raising about the levels, points of and reasons for cereal postharvest losses, and opportunities for different actors and institutions to address them,

Enterprise domain (users of codified

knowledge, producers of mainly tacit knowledge) e.g. farmers; small, medium &

large agro-processors; commodity traders; input supply agents; companies and industries related to agriculture, particularly agro-processing eg equipment fabrication, sales and repair, product packaging and labelling materials; transporters; exporters

Research domain (mainly or sometimes

producing codified knowledge) e.g. national and

international agricultural research organisations; universities and technical colleges; private research foundations; private companies; NGOs

Intermediary domain: NGOs/ CBOs; extension services; consultants; private companies and other entrepreneurs; farmer and trade associations; media; information networks; donors

Enabling structures: banking and financial system; transport and marketing infrastructure; consumer protection agencies; food standards agencies; phytosanitary regulations and authorities; professional networks, including trade and farmer associations; education system; IPR and information system; government regulatory system (e.g. local govt, local policy makers, policy enforcement e.g. regulations, laws etc); standards and norms

Demand domain: consumers of food and food products in rural and urban areas; consumers of industrial raw materials; local, national and international commodity markets; policy-making process and agencies

Interaction

International interactions: trade & investment agreements; agricultural policies; exchange rates; market structures

greater interaction/communication between cereal postharvest researchers in and outside Egypt16_.

Training – crop postharvest management is often omitted from agricultural training programmes due to resource constraints,

postharvest activities being seen to be at the end of the crop cycle, and a lack of familiarity with the topic by many agricultural trainers. In addition to running specific multi-disciplinary improved postharvest management training courses targeted at the needs of the various actors in the cereal postharvest supply chain (e.g. extensionists, farmers, traders, transporters, store managers), crop postharvest management also needs to be incorporated into the curricula of primary and secondary schools and diploma level agriculture (Stathers et al., 2013). Some freely-accessible hands-on-learning style cereal postharvest management training materials already exist (e.g. the WFP/NRI Training Manual and Course for Improving Grain Postharvest Handling and Storage created by Hodges and Stathers, 2012), and could be adapted to fit the Egyptian context and targeted towards the different supply chain actors.

Products – many products already exist which could be adopted and adapted by actors in the Egyptian cereal postharvest supply chains to help reduce losses. Some of these products include improved smallholder grain protection options such as hermetic bags, effective pesticides, drying sheets, threshing machines, and larger scale storage options such as improved warehouses and stock management systems. However, these products will only be useful if they are introduced alongside capacity building programmes so that supply chain actors understand how to use them optimally and why.

Strengthened innovation system functioning – ongoing co-learning and interaction needs to be facilitated between the different key stakeholders in the cereal postharvest systems (this can initially be expensive, and needs to be owned, driven and of value to the supply chain actors if real issues are to be highlighted and sustainable solutions identified and implemented at the scale required), this process will also generate demand-driven research agendas which if followed will increase the perceived relevance of agricultural research to various private and public-sector stakeholders.

Creating an enabling environment –the enabling environment is diverse and multi-faceted, the different players including the political leadership will need to be sensitised to ensure they understand the potential and increasing role to be played by cereal postharvest loss reduction in national and household level food security. This will help build advocacy for the integration of postharvest management in development planning and resources and sectoral policies.

16 _{The need for more postharvest specialists and extensionists and greater communication between postharvest researchers} and development of more inter-disciplinary working styles were also noted by Yahia, 2005.

As discussed in the previous sub-section, the Egyptian government is heavily involved in the cereal supply chains with the aim of securing national food security and political stability. However, various studies suggest this involvement is in several ways leading to inefficiencies, uncertainties and increased losses. Whether and how the private sector in partnership with the public sector can improve efficiency, increase investment and reduce postharvest losses without jeopardising national food security and political stability in such an import dependent country will be a key area of future exploration and experimentation. The government is already implementing innovative strategies to try and improve efficiency and reduce losses and corruption in the cereal supply chain (e.g. the baladi bread reforms which have involved a switch to electronic smart cards for beneficiaries to access their 5 loaves of baladi bread per day and to determine the bakers subsidies (FAO, 2015), although such changes bring new challenges with reports of bakers holding and misusing the smart cards of their insufficiently informed customers and hacking the systems (Wally, 2016; Knecht, 2016), the system may ultimately move to becoming a cash-based more targeted income transfer system; upgrading of shouna storage facilities and management systems with improved warehouses and in some cases more secure and less labour intensive silos of increased storage capacity (e.g. ~30,000t)).

Many methods and tools to assist such cereal postharvest loss reduction approaches already exist. Whilst significant gains could be made through simply supporting the adoption of already known improved postharvest management practices and greater interaction and co- learning between the different actors involved in the cereal supply chain, a longer-term improved postharvest management strategy is required to drive sustainable and on-going loss reduction, including incorporation of the topic into agricultural training programmes, capacity building of extensionists, researchers, traders and store managers etc. for continued monitoring and responsive action.