KIRDI partners with FAO to train entrepreneurs on post-harvest loss reduction

By Jabali Media

The Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute (KIRDI) is partnering with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), to train small scale entrepreneurs on post-harvest loss reduction.

The five-day training which started on Monday runs to Friday this week, aimed at empowering participants with innovative actions on post-harvest food loss and waste reduction.

Participants are being taken through business Innovation, quality control in food production, hazard analysis critical control point, product packaging, labeling and coding, hygiene and safety in food handling and preparation, and product development and standardization among other areas.

Addressing the press at KIRDI Western region centre in Kisumu where the training is ongoing, Dr Calvin Onyango, the institute’s Director General said they are targeting small scale entrepreneurs since they fit into the government’s bottom-up economic transformation agenda.

“How do we uplift these people doing work at a very small scale and ensure that they can be able to sustain themselves, provide for their livelihoods and also for their families?” he stated.

The training, he said, entails both theory and practice lessons with a view of empowering participants with value addition skills for both farm and animal products.

“This program was informed by the fact that a lot of food normally goes to waste when you get it from the farm. What we are trying to do as an institution is how do we minimize this loss of food from the farm from the current 30% to actually 0%.”

His sentiments were echoed by Winnie Yegon, FAO representative.

“The innovations are brilliant and we really want to see how we can scale up some of them, and see how we can really take tangible steps to addressing food loss and waste in the country,” said Yegon.

Some of the beneficiaries led by Christine Nyagah and Arnold Adero said they are looking forward to effectively addressing some of the challenges they have been facing, courtesy of skills acquired during the program.

“The gap we find as farmers is that we don’t have a market for our products, and even if the vegetables and the fruits are ready, they are not picked immediately by the buyers. So, you find that some of them rot very fast,” noted Christine.