Opening a regional postharvest training center in Tanzania

Opening a regional postharvest training center in Tanzania

Trainers talk to farmers about maintaining freshness and proper postharvest handling of various vegetable crops after harvest.
Through this project, new postharvest specialists from six African countries were trained and a Postharvest Training and Services Center was opened in Tanzania, as a model for the new experts to emulate in their countries. Here a group of farmers receives training on maintaining vegetable freshness from two of the new trainers at the newly established center in Arusha, Tanzania.
Project Description

Losses of horticultural crops after harvest continue to range from 30-80 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa, including well documented problems with food quality, safety and nutritional value. 

This project combines a wide variety of training programs, adaptive research and demonstrations of postharvest services — while providing access to needed tools and supplies in order to reduce postharvest losses and improve market access and incomes for small-scale women farmers in Tanzania. Led by Diane Barrett of UC Davis, this project's international team will also 

The location of the Postharvest Training and Services Center established by this project team in Tanzania, at the World Vegetable Center's regional office in Arusha, will serve as a model for postharvest development in five additional Sub-Saharan countries, whose representatives will participate via collaboration with African partners.

Through project activities, 30 postharvest specialists from the six countries in Sub-Saharan Africa will be well-qualified to implement enhanced postharvest handling techniques and training. After their training, the specialists are charged to teach these techniques to approximately 1,000 women farmers in their home countries. This will result in increased consumption of higher quality produce and improved returns on investment to women farmers.

Updates about the Postharvest Training and Services Center (PTSC):

Project deliverables, postharvest information and research results:

-3.3869254, 36.6829927

-1.940278, 29.873888

7.946527, -1.023194

-0.023559, 37.906193

9.4235412005729, 2.672803833374

-0.803689, 11.609444

Value Chain

Postharvest practices

Countries

Tanzania Rwanda Ghana Kenya Benin Gabon

USAID Objective

Resilience

News

Lizann Wheeler talking to group around the brick-based cooling chamber.

Visiting Tanzania: Postharvest Training and Services Center

Posted on
Graduate student researcher Elyssa Lewis and I were invited to observe a refresher training course in Tanzania with the World Food Logistics Organization and the TOPS Program. The visit included evaluation of a project that trained experts in postharvest handling and established a Postharvest Training and Services Center.