 Goedemorgen, dames en heren, dames en heren, ik ben heel blij om je te welkomst op de FEO-webinar op de Havons en Post-Havons Practices om voetbal en wees te reduken. We organiseren deze webinar als een serie onder de FEO's Regional Safe Food Initiative die is een regional voetbal en wees programma voor Europa en Centraal-Asia. Dit is een deel van onze capaciteitgebouwen. Deze webinar is de eerste in de serie die op de aandacht van identiferen en verbindingen goede practies en inspireren transformatieve intervenciënten om te preventen en te reduken voetbal als een wees onder de voetbalchains. Deze webinar zal focussen op een specifieke fase van de voetbalchains van productie en consumptie om praktische oplossingen op de problemen die er op de steek zijn en deze oplossingen dan zouden kunnen worden verpleegd of gebouwd op een nationaal of regionaal niveau. Dus onze speakers vandaag hebben de key concepten en problemen van de Havons en Post-Havons segmenten van de voetbalchains en presenten oplossingen en cases voor effectieve intervenciënten om voetbalchains te reduken. Voordat ik de voetbalchains aan de eerste speaker geef zou ik een paar praktische noten maken voor de oplossingen van deze meetings. De presentaties worden in Engels gemaakt en we hebben een simultaneous transmissie in Russie en in Turkisch en je vindt de language switch en op het kleine globedrijf op de eind van je schrijf. We zijn heel blij om je vragen te krijgen tijdens de presentaties en deze vragen en commands vragen jullie om in de Q&A box te schrijven op de eind van je schrijf. Please do not use the chat box for this but the Q&A box as well. En je kunt ook deze vragen schrijven in Russie of in Turkisch. If you wish. When you write the question, please indicate your name and indicate the name of the speaker or panelist that you want to address the question to. This webinar is being recorded and broadcasted on YouTube as well. Okay, having said that, now I would like to give the floor to our first speaker which is Ms. Josiane Cloutier. She is a post-havis consultant and researcher at Wageningen University and Research. In her presentation she will focus on the ways that science innovation helps introduce food loss across the food supply chains. Josiane, it's your turn. Thank you. Thank you very much, Robert. Thank you for being here today. Today I will have a talk about how science and innovation help reduce food losses across the delivery food chains. So imagine the effect of severe food loss and waste on your business and what will it be the impact on the efficiency of your business and can we reduce waste? Well, this is why we are here today. But before addressing this question we first need to know what are the reasons of post-havis losses. We have to keep in mind that fresh fruits and vegetables are alive. So the breathe and that rhythm of breathing is affected by temperature. So the lower the temperature, the lower they will do their respiration. But it can also be affected by the level of oxygen, CO2 and ethylene. And of course this process of breathing will generate heat. Let's not forget that. And that is important to know and to keep in mind in the post harvest management. There are several sources of post harvest losses. If we look at the use of oxygen that produces heat, as in the first picture on the top left, the temperature is slightly higher than what was said. Juziana, sorry, I have to interrupt you. We don't see your presentation. You don't see my presentation? Maybe you have forgotten to share it. You can share. You can share. Share screen. I'm so sorry. I thought that was sharing. Now we see it. Yeah, okay. Very nice. Yes. Okay, good. So yeah, that was the slide of the introduction. And when I was talking about reducing waste and here about the temperature and the breathing of the products. So here we see that the product is using oxygen expulsing CO2, losing water, producing heat and will be also affected by ethylene. My colleague Hans de Bilt will talk in more detail of those, about those subjects. So what I was saying here, the first picture on the top left, it's an example of heat production in the cold storage, even though the cold storage is set at a very low temperature. Due to the breathing process, it is a bit higher than the settings in the cold storage. The second picture in the middle, there's an example of shriveling on the apples due to water loss. And the one on the right, yeah, the ripeness will continue after harvest until senescence and eventually the death of the product. Here we see the beans are starting changing colors, color. If the product is breathing, then it also means that it can choke. So by reducing the oxygen level, we extend their shelves, their storage time. But if we decrease it too low, we can have the product in lack of oxygen. It can overheat. It can suffer from hypothermic, that's for chilling injury, or get affected by diseases. And the last two examples are the physical damage. And here in this picture in the middle down, we see in the affected apple that the infection entered due to a physical damage. And lastly, the mechanical damage. Here we see a probably a sun while picking a nail that got into the fruit and the runes just wasn't afterwards. Unfortunately, according to the FAO, one third of the food produced is lost or wasted. Where in some regions of the world, food is mainly lost during the processing and distribution part of the supply chain. In other parts of the world, the losses are occurring at the consumption level, as we can see in this diagram. But luckily, we are living at the time where improvements will bring big changes. Where the return on investment in both harvest technology can reach one to 14, meaning that for every one dollar invested, there's a possible return of $14 to the company. It will make a difference for your business, but also for food security, as we will have to feed one billion more people within a few decades. Food loss of waste costs the global economy $940 billion every year. And if food loss of waste would be a country, it would generate so much due to a year that it will be the third largest emitter of CO2 in the world. What do you want to be part of this improvement? Well, I do and this is why I do what I do and that I'm thrilled to be here today in front of you. When I click, it goes too fast. Okay, my name is Jozaine Cloutier, like Robert said. I'm a French Canadian living in the Netherlands. I'm a post-harvest consultant and a researcher. I have ten years of working experience in the agricultural sector from the open fields to greenhouses and from supply chain to international trade. Hans en I were working at Wageningen Research. That's part of the university and it's the global number one of agrofood in the Netherlands. And there's 45 percent of the graduates. Students are from abroad representing more than 100 nations, which I'm a part of. And you have to keep in mind that it's all happening in the small town of 40,000 people. And the strength of Wageningen University and research is that it is composed of two parts. The university with more than 12,000 students and 4,000 publications a year. And there's a research center where I work. That's a contract research where applied and pre-competitive research is done. We work with companies to develop patents and licenses. And one of the departments is the post-harvest technology department for fresh food. My former colleagues started during the previous century with refrigeration technology and later on with a wave of technology game like packaging. And we did a lot of work with etylene and controlled atmosphere and sensing technology. And more recently we are working with artificial intelligence and data to improve logistics. And of course all those subjects are still actual and improvements is still to be needed. And why are we working so hard? Well, we want to go from the current situation where fresh product has to fit in certain specification leading to losses and that is fighting against nature. Nature which provides us with fruits and vegetables of different shapes and ripening rapidity. And the ripening rapidity is one of the challenges in post-harvest management. And on top of this farmers get lower prices for their outclass products leading to even more pressure on the supply chain. So we aim to perfectly match the quality of fresh produce to consumer demands and preferences in a sustainable way. Here is a representation of the entire food supply chain from the production to the consumption. Losses are encountered at every step because of structural or economic technological or behavior issues and flexible procedures or simply the poor synchronization between the supply and the demand. And at our institutes we have started to measure the food loss and waste during the entire chain. It has become more clear where and especially why food is lost. And then we focus on the chain from the harvest moment en dat is de post-harvest chain. We give advice on when and how to harvest and how to store or to use packaging. We work to the consumption from the retail to the households to upcycle waste. And here is where the measurements has been done already. That's the dark purple color. And the light purple color represents the measurements dat is nog te be completen. En zoals je kunt zien, er is nog veel werk te doen want wanneer we het measureen dan kunnen we beter om het te pakken en de probleem te adressen. Dus nu wil ik terug naar mijn eerste vraag. Mijn vraag, de titel van dit doek. Want het is een grote vraag dus het is een grote vraag. Dus ik zal dat in een verschillende depte gaan van de product tot de data hier. Dus we hebben de probleem de probleem opgemaakt van de product door de measurementen in de post-harvest om de kwaliteit te ontstaan en proberen te predicteren de kwaliteit. In een minuut zal ik jullie wat meer exemplen van dat geven. We bekijken de technologie hoe de product kwaliteit te ontstaan door de post-harvest om de kwaliteit te controleren. We bekijken de logistiek dus hoe de beslissing te ontstaan in de supply chain en we bekijken de hele systeem hoe de consumer en nog een goede supply chain hebben. En alle die steppen gebruiken of generatie data. En dus hoe kunnen we goed gebruiken van die data. Dat is ook een van de challenges en subjecten die we ontstaan. Dus terug naar de eerste subjecten die ik heb gezegd. We werken veel met fresh food and vegetable companies of tech companies te bekijken op de reisning proces of te brezen voor post-harvest kwaliteit te ontstaan voor non-invasive kwaliteit bereidigd zodat alle fruits kan worden bemerkt zonder los te zijn en worden properly specified. En we ook offer consultancy. Hier is een examen dat mango had te worden gekocht in order te check de reisning stage de internaal stage maar dat is wat we willen uitvoeren. De tweede subjecten die ik eerlijk zie shown in de cirkel is de kwaliteit kwaliteit tijdens storage en transport en we werken veel met storage en transport companies en once again with fresh foods en vegetables companies we look at dynamic control climate so how to improve that we have a project right now looking at how to reduce the CO2 production and saving money by going totally off grid and how to use the data of the cold store in a more efficient way. If we look at quality driven logistics it's mostly supply chain owners that do that type of projects and some example of topics that we did are the fresh e-garmers for the measurements of the cold box strain transport. We also looked at plastic free supply chains with the cooling and misting system as we see here and it has been implemented in the Netherlands by some retailers so that's also saved in labor time because the products do not need to be put back in the cold storage for the night so they get misted and it pulls them down enough to stay there overnight. We also looked at adaptive and intelligence packaging. This project is also still going on to be further improved. It's made of potato starch and according to the external conditions it allows the fruits to stay fresh and in this case tests were done at eight and 18 degrees and the pairs stayed much fresher than the conventional packaging. And last one to make an example of more circularity in agriculture this packaging here the box of the tomatoes was made of old plants tomato plants so we can harvest the tomato plants at the end of the growing season and make the boxes in which the tomatoes will be put the next year. And then there's the food system design and that's at more at the government level and supply chain level because this has to be well organized I mean only larger scale and we look at future food supply and how we will keep on feeding the cities and thinking local but acting global so this is more in a visionary access to to the situation and finally what I said about data and artificial intelligence then we look at the whole supply chain and that those data helps us to predict the quality to give also more transparency in the chain allowing for example de farmer to keep ownership of their product but also to because the chain is more transparent to reduce the losses in the chain to improve the decision making at the same time to build up history of data but here it's a diagram showing how uh new knowledge can be and implemented and how we we do it and I think this is a great advantage of the of the Wagner University is the way we work from fundamental to applied to the implementation in order to have an impact the fundamental research is used as a base for the applied research so what Hans and I are doing and for this demonstration in the industry followed by the implementation of new technology and this way the knowledge is developed where the market needs needed to get results for example last year we worked on developing a new packaging for a international company and that packaging was better recyclable so we really worked near the implementation here with them so to answer their questions and that is necessary because food loss and waste is a complicated situation because it is a global challenge there are some structural issues to technological issues or management and behavior issues it's it's difficult to tackle in one direction en all leading to loss in quality of the product and waste and this is why we need to work and together to achieve this and as you can see on this diagram in order to reach the food production by 2050 we need to reduce a food loss and waste and I hope we can do it together on innovations helping reduce food losses across the agribut chain so that was it for me today I hope you enjoyed my presentation sorry for the technical error at the beginning I hope you I can answer your questions and after me my colleague will show more concrete examples in both harvest management and don't see the box of questions maybe if I stop sharing I will see it well thank you Joziane we will take care of the questions if they arise and otherwise you will get a few for me thank you very much for this interesting presentation just the second piece as usual the first question is that people would like to to receive your presentation well I can say that all the presentations today will be shared with all the participants and audience of this webinar so I if I I have been listening with high interest to your presentation and it was very clear how you illustrated the increasing complexity of the food supply chain and the contribution of that increasing complexity to the problem of food losses we have seen that the food supply chains worldwide get longer they get part of international trades the scale of production has increased environmental concerns are coming in health concerns and the need for fresh products have been increasingly important in food supply chains as well as the diversity of products all these things make the whole food system more complex and also give rise to more occurrence of food loss and waste and therefore science and technology and also need to step up and be innovative in order to address these problems that come along with the modernization and that is what you clearly have presented in your presentation I need to sorry, I need to get some feedback now from my colleagues do I first go to the next presentation or do I first address questions Oksana, can you tell me that Robert, there is one question in the question and answer box you should be able to see it it's from Samir Albadri yeah a question from one of the audience Mr. Samir Albadri is there a mathematical model to extend the shelf life of foods and vegetables Joziane yeah we are working on it it is quite complex because it will vary per cultivar of the product so not only per product but also for cultivar and also depending on the growing season we we are working on it we also have an application to per cultivar apple and pears to know exactly how to put them in the cold storage so it's not a mathematical model yet but that's certainly something that's been is under a process but what we already offer our application with a detailed storage advice I hope that answer your question and I see that yeah then the next question that I see here is to be concrete we need to from Sophie Treinen we need to react and embed the changes in the food supply chain so how is Wageningen University and the resource program practically embedding these these changes into projects en in food supply chains ja we have several projects and we we do them with companies so yeah it's it's implemented there's a lot that are confidential at that moment but what I can say there's one we worked on pears the project is called humistatus to predict the bear ripening process to reduce wastes after the harvest we also work on a project called fresh on demand that's including supermarkets and companies to look at reducing waste on different approach for example with different type of packaging and also better recyclable packaging of biodegradable packaging there is a other project that we do is called breeding for post harvest so how can we tackle the problem from the genetic so before the product is even grown so that the tomatoes for example will be able to stay longer on shelf or that the flowers will stay more beautiful for a longer time from their genetics so those are a few examples that I can think of right now okay then we have a question from Nechati Simsakli sorry if I don't pronounce it well but it's written in Turkish so I'm asking the translator to to read out the question into English if you can see it I've put it in Google Translate because I don't hear the translator the question is is the most important issue you have identified so far in the food industry is waste or quality thank you it's a very good question actually it's it's how to measure or how to predict quality that's the biggest challenge because from the moment that we know how a product will react and how long we have to process it or to put in the supply chain then we can make a better decision so from the moment of the harvest we have to be clear from the moment of the harvest we cannot make a product better than what it is we can only preserve the quality so it's important to reach the best quality we can during growth of the product and from the harvest our job is to preserve the quality like one of my colleagues is saying the post harvest management is not a hospital so I would say it's it's a the answer is a mix of the two by knowing the quality and be able to predict the quality we can reduce waste all right then I see a question from Guljahan Kurobanova the question is what are main innovation approaches reducing food losses and waste at different stages of the food supply chain for sustainability of food systems what may you recommend for other countries now I would like to say that this question is very broad it is a very rightful question but it is very broad and it covers actually the presentations that we are going to have following this this very morning plus a number of webinars that you organise later in the year because you are asking about food loss and waste all along the whole food supply chain and what can be recommended for different countries so I would like to ask you Guljahan to hold on with your question and to await the coming presentations and see if the answers are still provided and otherwise they will follow up in the next the next webinars otherwise the response will be a webinar on its own and the question from Robert Fransch in international supply chains what are the weak links Guljahan misschien kun je de vraag over de post-harvest de post-harvest segment van de supply chain in internationale context maar wat zou je proberen de weak spot van de post-harvest sector de post-harvest sector over internationale supply chains we moeten proberen in de context dat food wordt geïnsporteerd in in in aan de zee bijvoorbeeld en grote schipen en door de schipen er zijn niet alleen vresche producten dus de transporters zijn het meeste interesse is om de bestemming op de tijd op de juiste tijd maar het is niet nodig om die speeches op de juiste temperatuur of op de juiste oxygen niveau want hij ook transporten het bunch of other stuff dus de weegste punt het zou ook in de transport tussen verschillende mens van transport dus wanneer we van de trok en dan we arrive bij de harbor en dan is er een lap van tijd dat de product moet wachten tot het wordt op de boven en en natuurlijk ze doen het zo snel mogelijk want als ze meer producten dan is het meer efficiënt maar in dat lap het kan een paar uur dus het kan een paar dagen de condities zijn niet altijd gebouwd dus door de verandering van transporten er zijn de het meeste punt ik denk omdat ze niet alleen werken met vresch producten ook in een paar landen we praten over dat de product veranderd van containers literlijk van boven of containers en dat kan waar bruising kan appear voorvoorbeeld op de physical interesse dus het is een complex chain en ja om te summariseren wanneer we veranderd van een steekmolder in de chain of physical van een mens van transport naar een ander er is een risico dat de koolchain zal bebroken en daarom de product zal verdekken oké de volgende vraag is van Abidna Ready Vera Mala van India en het is doen we veel low-cost post harvest equipment available in India nu dit is natuurlijk een heel rijke en praktische vraag en ik kan je imagineren dat je niet de antwoord op de weg maar misschien kunnen we deze informatie om Vera Mala op de later staats je je je je ja want het is een erg een broad answer dat kan zijn een hele seminar in hetzelfde ik heb een paar projecten in India oh kijk kijk dat dus je je je er is daar ja ja en maar ik ben ik ben minder geïnteresseerd dan dan in de jaren maar ik ben daar een paar keer en maar het is zowel dat de communicatie tussen de verschillende houders is is niet als transparant in andere plekken van de wereld en er is een reden dat het is deze weg maar de de feit dat het is de informatie is niet transparant er is een veel van de koolchain is niet geïnteresseerd bijvoorbeeld of de boxen moet worden geïnteresseerd vele keer voordat de product de eind dus deze vraag is nu op de stilte door om een low-cost equipment in post harvest maar we moeten het ook van van een communicatie punt of u in de hele supply chain omdat als we gewoon zeggen oh we kunnen de koolstof en om je product te houden maar dan er is een hele ja er is een hele infrastructuur rond de koolstof en de communicatie dat moet moeten worden in plekken omdat nu de chain is is echt niet transparant dus het is heel dificult te doen de logistiek meer efficiënt te reduken waast maar dat is een heel goede vraag dat wil er meer voorzien ja ja en heb je van uw vraag we gaan terug op dit binnen en of een respons anders kan je altijd contact is ieder juziana of mijzelf op fio met met specifieke vragen die we dan kunnen antwoorden bij e-mail en er is een vraag van Richard Thompson te wat extent kan conventional plastic gebruikt in packaging worden geplaatst bij biobased materials en wat zijn de impacten op de packaging performance voor reductie voetloos heel goede vraag ook heel groot de conventional plastic is heel praktisch heel duidelijk maar de de probleem is dat er zoveel types van het en om te recycelen het is moeilijk als er een recycel faciliteit rond dus dat is dat is een pittie want anders is het een goede manier om de product te blijven langer maar de biobased materials de de positieve impact is dat wat de naam zegt het is van organisch materiaal dus we kunnen composten dus we we niet moeten separeren de verschillende type van biobased material ze zal allemaal worden composted en nu die biobased materials zijn ontwikkeld zodat ze zou al zo goed als de conventional plastic of beter zoals de de manier dat ik explain met de tomato of de potato start dat de fruit kan zijn als de coleschijn is gebroken de fruit was beter gebouwd als we de verschillende van 8 tot 18 tot 8 weer dan een conventional plastic ja, dus ik hoop dat ik je vraag ja, dan een vraag van dan die hele fatiben zijn er een relevant exemplen van regulatie of politie ontwikkeling neemt plaats op Europese level te reduken posthavonslosses waar je monitoren in je research ja dit is persoonlijk niet mijn topic van research die is meer mijn mijn collega's dus dus ik heb niet de vraag nu ik zou zeggen er is waarschijnlijk een relevant regulatie en de politie onder de ontwikkeling maar ik heb geen exemplen nu maar ik kan in de juiste collega's en ik geef de vraag oké de volgende ik ben echt erg blij en geimpraasd door de langlist van vragen en de variety van de topics zoals de diversiteit van de mensen vragen dan nu ik ga de vraag van Amad al krijsat hij is vragen als ik de import van nieuw fruit species in de land en op een arriveel de hele lood was disease wat stappen doe ik te de diagnose en de probleem is er een general procedure of scheme volgd voor post harvest management te identify de cause of de unknown disease ja wat stappen dat kan worden done is send de sample te een lab te kan be our lab voor exampel of of en een ander om om om om neer bij food lab food lab anders het zal dekijken even verder neer neer waar je bent en te identify wat got de product rotten ook te identify wanne it could have happened is it because the the transport was not done under at the right temperature where the product decayed or was it a fungy for example that was there before it entered transport container and then it further developed during the transport so that's really important to identify when and what happened and once that is identified if it's a fungy that's happened priest storage then there's something that needs to be addressed in in the pre harvest phase but if it's during transport then we can look at the the conditions of the transportation if it was done according to the protocol the standard operation and procedures and even if not then we have to look at the contract who's has the ownership of the foods to to tackle the problem I hope that answer your question de next one is really challenging question in your genre so if you need any help in answering it I would be available but let me ask it to you could you comment on whether or not current international food supply chains are sustainable if not what are the areas that require immediate attention and focus and the question is from Sarang Tambale that is a very interesting question I asked myself that every week when I go to the supermarket I allow myself to buy bananas from the other side of the world but then I think okay it's too far so where do we put the line and how can we buy more sustainably food but it's a very complex question because the apples in the Netherlands dat we i each year rounds they are stored and therefore use energy so what is the limit between the storage of the fruit that are grown locally or importing at once product so we have to make the calculation of the of the CO2 production it depends also how you see the sustainability and do you see it as CO2 production or on pesticides, use land, water, use that's also very broad but what I can say is that so a few years ago some of my colleagues they looked at for apples how far the apples had to come from to make it more less sustainable than locally grown apples that were kept in the cold storage and the answer was roughly 400 kilometers so if you buy apples further within 400 kilometers it would be better in their calculation for that specific situation to buy locally so that's the calculation that's we need to make for different products there's another example that was calculated that for flowers it would be more sustainable to make them come from Edochia to the Netherlands for example once because you have one time a transport then growing them locally because locally then we have to heat up the greenhouse the year year round so it's a very complex and challenging question and that's what I can say for now but that's deserve a lot of attention as well thank you very much all right there are more questions but I want to leave it now because we need to go to the next speaker and since the next speaker Mr. Hans de Wilde is from the same department in de Wageningen University as Georgiane and the topics are touching on each other probably we can address some of the the main questions after his presentation otherwise as I said we can always get back to the the persons who asked the question later by email and answer them so now I would like to introduce Hans de Wilde post haversprozident and researcher at Wageningen University and research and and here Hans de Wilde proceed with the presentation as was started by Joziane Hans, please go ahead thank you Robert I will share my screen just a moment I hope I succeeded do you see my screen Robert no sorry we don't see it yet try again now we see your screen yes yes okay like this yes please just go to the right go to the right slides ja okay ja goeiedag welkom te dit part of the webinar thanks for joining and we also want to thank the FAO for giving us this opportunity to discuss this important and interesting subject my goal of today is to present to you various practical measures for reduction of post havers losses I give you some practical examples and tips about improvement of harvest practice improvement of post havers management importance of quality monitoring and technical checks I'd like to quickly introduce myself I'm Hans de Wilde from Wageningen University and research and Wageningen is also the place where I studied horticotia and I worked as a scientific researcher which resulted in my PhD title in biology then between 2007 and 2018 I worked in the industry as an R&D technical manager for the company ArgoFresh and then I found the right combination of being both consultant and researcher in post havers in my current function my expertise is harvest and storage recommendations advanced post havers technologies post havers physiology ethylene en 1mcp in de presentatie ik zal deze drie key points ontdekken het eerste dat we over de havers in de initial handling zijn het is de temperatuur management materiaal havers maturiteit picking en transport dan ga ik jullie wat uitvoeren van storage including the storage conditions cooling moisture loss ethylene oxygen en CO2 en ik wil de importance van kwaliteit, monitoring en checks uitleggen en eindelijk ik zal het in de conclusie summariseren eerst havers in de initial handling ik wil deze soorten activiteiten zoals je nu ziet op de grond er is een fresh harvest product komen in clean goede field crates nicely stacked on the concern that this moment is when will this reach the cold store when will this product start with cooling down and that brings us to temperature management this is here a situation from pack ties with freshly harvested melons waiting to be transported in the field waiting to be transported to the packhouse and here we look at the graph take the point here we look at the graph it's about the melon internal temperature and you see early in the morning 11 past 9 the temperature of the melon is somewhere between 30 32 degrees already depending on a bit on the whether it's in the bottom of the of the load or on the top of the load and then each 15 minutes about each 15 minutes there's an increase in temperature of about one degree and that shows how fast something like this can go en it also means that these melons will bring an extra heat load when they enter the storage room so it will take a considerable time again to cool down in the storage room to the optimum cold temperature and in addition to the higher energy cost and the delays in logistics this will have a direct impact on quality another point of attention are the materials they should be suitable and sufficient for the harvesters and at the beginning of harvest the materials etc they are almost enough and they are clean but they should remain the case during the total harvest period like field bins, crates, trays should not be broken not contain sharp edges because it can damage the product and must be clean workers must be equipped with their appropriate work equipment such as gloves sharp halft scissors and maturity charts the maturity at harvest is a very important part of the total chain because it can have consequences of the quality later in the chain the harvest must be well planned in order not to harvest too unamatured or over matured het is belangrijk te consider de markt needs en requirements in order te harvest on time a good labour planning is necessary and the training of pickers instruction of what they should pick is also very important and i want to illustrate these three four points with these two photos of the apples can you see the differences between the two photos on the left you see this still these two wet most wet apples and on the right picture they have been picked so this is an example of having multiple picks it means that the amount of apples picked under or over mature will you much less it means the market gets more equal product labour planning of course it will take extra labour to make an extra harvest round but that probably pays back in more kilograms and a better size and color of the remaining apples and of course trainers should be or the pickers should be trained well in which product they should harvest whether it's apple or maturity states of the plum or the color of the tomato for detail determining this maturity levels there are several methods like sugar content or color, taste, starch, firmness my message is here please use them use them the right way write down the measurement take photos and learn from the data that is so important also for the next crop to be harvest to learn from your own experiences once a product is then ready to harvest of course you should be done carefully regardless of the crop here are some examples of what we see in practice the point is that incorrect handling may not show to the harvester yet but may show up only later in the chain and the harvester awareness of this is important for instance when a fruit like this is picked without a stem it's not only cosmetic damage but it can also lead to more decay later in the chain we must make sure that the harvest understands that such an apple can cause major problems later on also a broken stem abruzes bins being overfilled or small injuries these may not seem serious at harvest but they can cause severe losses later in the chain another point of attention at harvest is the prevention of contamination one advice I can give here is to separate the seized fruit from healthy fruit already in the field if possible and this may be done for instance by using extra crate as you see here for the apples so damaged apples during harvest are collected in a separate crate and a same example you can see here for the strawberries when extra crate is placed on top of the trolley where the seized strawberries are collected in transport is also a very important part of the total post harvest chain it's not only from the field to the backhouse but also from the backhouse to destination by truck, by river container or plane even pay attention to temperature management temperature is very important ventilation and circulation can depend on the commodity of even variety suitable packaging to protect the quality of the product against damages careful stacking careful driving and for that one careful driving sometimes drivers may need training how to load and handle horticulture produce because horticultural fresh produce is clearly different from in this kind of frozen food then the second part of my presentation I want to focus on storage and some of our experiences here and factors we control in storage are temperature, humidity oxygen in CO2 and etaline and in this process of storage the quality checks and technical checks points an optimal temperature is usually the first requirement to maintain a good quality for the horticultural produce it prolongs the storage life and preserves the quality in several aspects by slowing down ripening and senescence by slowing down the development of pathogens and also by reducing water loss by the products preventing issues like swivelling and wilting pre-colling is a method being used to remove the field heat when the product comes from the field into the storage keeping a good quality of fruit and vegetables also ornamentals in the cold chain when the produce is simply placed inside our home then the cooling of the produce can be slow there are several pre-colling systems available to bring down the temperature of the product much faster like vacuum cooling, hydro cooling and the use of ice also forced air cooling the forced air cooling is the most IT used method of pre-colling and I will go a little bit more best known are these tunnel type fixed units where our fan is housed inside the wall of a cold storage room and this fan is used to drive the cool air to the load within a refrigerated room you have these canvas or polyethylene sheets they are rolled over the top of the load down to the floor and this forces the cold air to the fans of the packaging and giving a faster temperature decrease for the product so this is an effective method of cooling down fresh products quickly you see some indication given here on the screen but as post-hearts consultant we often see these nice systems but they are often not used optimally a good design of the packaging of ventilation holes in the packaging is necessary to provide an effective and uniform cooling then the stacking of the boxes of packages they must be carried out in such a way that the openings and the stacking is that way that the air flow goes to it and follows the right path more often than thought the air flow does not follow the intended path to the stack instead it follows a much shorter path than intended and this can be prevented by using materials like foam or cardboard pieces to block this short circuit of air and as peak cooling should be monitored well to ensure that the cooling is achieved in the most efficient way so if you are using these systems measure the temperature at several points in the stack and look for improvements something about trucks and the river containers where saturated trucks and river containers do not have sufficient cooling capacity to lower the product temperature a lot it means that the fresh product must be pre-cooled before it enters a refrigerated truck or a river for temperature you can distinguish between air and product temperature and air temperature is often measured but the importance of measuring also the internal product temperature is often underestimated within our home there will be differences it is important to have temperature measurement at the it seems we have lost hands the connection with hands yes i also don't have hands and also i don't see rozean or no rozean is there i'm here should i call him you could or probably he's trying to reconnect we could maybe use this time to address the remaining questions while we are waiting or let's give him a few minutes yeah let's first try to understand what happens and we can see if you need if you need to fill in the time i just mentioned via whatsapp that we don't hear him anymore we don't see him either ja i have an answer so he's probably busy trying to reconnect maybe it would indeed be a good start rozean if you can answer the next question that you have received the next question is i would like to learn whether there are good food recovery and the registration practices in countries that you monitor in your research ja is so she you it oh yeah that we we answered already right no recovery what he's what he means exactly by recovery because we recovery means that you get you get back products from the food supply chain products which are at risk to get lost or wasted because they are reaching ultimate maturity or expiry dates etc ja ja dat neemt dan een goede communicatie between the scale stakeholder so a clear supply chain a transparent supply chain so once that's in in place that's possible to to do so ja de question is if you apply that if you're doing research to that if that is part of your research program ja some some colleagues focus only on that so if you want more information on this more specifically i can get him or her in touch with the right people within the university ja ja okay then the next question was from heightham hamdan as mentioned you're well known that cold chain management is the key factor in control a key product quality for a long time how can we benefit efficiently from solar energy in that matter in an affordable way on all value chain steps now let's particularly focus on the post harvest very change step for now okay so the use of solar energy in order to keep the cold chain alive um we have one project that's for the moment confidential but we are working on it so as soon as it's not confidential anymore then i will be able to say more about it but what is already known is that we can use make the use of batteries to store the the energy but currently we are working in another system without batteries or much less um yeah so yeah i would say with the use of batteries we can achieve that i trust that the confidentiality has nothing to do with politics and so but that is rather a scientific no it's because we um yeah i maybe i should clarify that it's because we work a lot with companies um so they want to keep their results for themselves for a little bit so that they are able to implement what they invested in before competitors are jumping on on the knowledge um so yeah this this this is the only reason why okay in the meantime i've seen that hans has uh joint is again yeah hans what happened and can you continue i don't know what happened but i'll try to continue you have to share the screen again then right yes okay is it okay robot yes you're back i'm not sure where you uh where we lost connection i think it's summer here about the importance of temperature maybe i'll repeat something with temperature so important so that's actually a good slide to repeat maybe we can distinguish between air and product temperature and air temperature is often measured but we should not forget about the internal product temperature and importance of measuring the product temperature is often underestimated when we measure inside the storage room it's important to measure at different spots including also the coldest and warmest place at least when you're using equipment temperature sensors uh of course it should be accurate uh because if not it can lead to serious consequences if the product is not stored at the right temperature which can lead to losses in part of the rooms or even complete rooms a zero check of the centers is mostly done by the supplier but because of its importance i also recommend meant for each storage manager also to check it yourself it can be done in melting ice water like for example you see on the photo melting ice water in a isolated can and while doing this check you need to stare the sensor and then it should give a temperature of 0.0 degrees besides fixed temperature sensors in the room i recommend not only twist on them but also have a hand temperature control available to do regular checks yourself uh more about uh temperature how to optimize it and one way is optimize by having a good maintenance and cleaning of your cooling equipment because dirty coolers have less performance it means they have to cool for longer cooling periods it consequently leads to more drying of the air and consequently more moisture loss from the products it also means when the cooling time per day is longer there will be more heat input to the fan motors and this temperature also has to be cooled down again which also means a higher energy consumption another way to optimize the temperature conditions inside the room is to optimize the air circulation make sure that the air circulation is similar in the entire cold room and prevent false air flows we have here an example it's a partially filled room with a stack of nine bins high and we've measured the airflow at different positions in this room and based on these measurements measuring the air flows we improved the temperature control in this room by improved use of these sales and also by blocking some areas in this case between bins and walls to prevent a false air flow en by these measures we see a more equal air circulation throughout all bins which also means a more equal temperature so an optimal temperature is mostly the first requirement to maintain a good quality of horticultural produce humidity is the second condition of importance in storage rooms and the relative humidity in storage rooms can have various effects on quality swifeling en realting are well known they are a consequence of moisture loss from the first produce to the dryer environment and moisture loss or water loss also means a loss of saleable rate sometimes some water loss is necessary to prevent physiological disorders like internal browning and apropares or to prevent fungal attacks this also varies again per commodity en even per variety and the table you see on the screen shows some examples for the long-term storage of apples and pears you see already the different recommendation for the storage temperature but there's also a recommendation for the percentage water loss per month for long-term storage that's not only a maximum to prevent swifeling but there's also a minimum to prevent certain internal disorders en prevent certain forms of decay like this table it's based on extensive research and also practical experience before we come up with these exact numbers low oxygen high CO2 they are applied in controlled atmosphere or ca storage here's not only the final settings that are important but also clear protocols are needed about how to reach these final conditions think about the exact time between harvest and the start of these conditions and the speed of the oxygen reduction how far should it actually go and we see especially in the storage of apples also strong development to even very low oxygen conditions in the dynamic controlled atmosphere the tca we've recently at Wagen developed a storage tool for apples and pears and also this based on research and practical experiences it's an application can be used on the phone as a as an app or on the pc and it describes per variety pear or apple the exact recommended protocol for the best storage conditions in detail we believe that the availability of this material in detail contributes to a better quality and thereby less losses you see that besides temperature co2 oxygen and recommendations for moisture loss it also contains a recommendation for one mcp it is an ethylene inhibitor it brings me to the next slide about ethylene also an important point in storage it's also called the wiping or senescence hormone it's very relevant for the wiping of many foods pieces most foods produce ethylene to start the wiping process and sometimes it can also be seen as positive for the taste and to to wipe in the product ethylene is even artificially supplied in ripening rooms in banana or mango or avocado however in many cases the presence of ethylene is undescribable it limits the storage time when fruit ripe too quickly and becomes overwipe this group includes products like apple apricot pear plum and tomato ethylene can also cause problems for produce where ripening does not play a role it can activate the senescence process in sensitive vegetables think about green beans cabbage lettuce broccoli carrots plantstock ethylene is also one of the air conditions that we actually can control with practical interventions if necessary the presence of high ethylene can indeed affect quality and lead to suboptimal application of practical solutions and when our negative effects of ethylene are suspected it will be good to measure and to take the right actions for example in the context of our advisory work we examined the concerns expressed by a european distributor of fruits and vegetables they had expressed their concerns about a certain distribution location about a certain room and we went there to check the ethylene concentration during a period of one week you see the ethylene in the graph there's a large variation and then can be several reasons for that there will be a difference during that week in the existing commodities and volumes in the room there can be a difference in the ripeness of the products there can be a difference in storage conditions like temperature and fluctuation in air chains by door openings of ventilation what's important here is the ethylene level you see it's always above 1000 ppb that's one ppm en several days even above 2000 ppb ppb ppb and this level is significantly higher than recommended for ethylene sensitive products it means it can have a negative impact on quality for this location in particular we have advised to first check the air outlet of adjacent banana ripening rooms because a possible contamination ethylene was coming from that side and a further strategy here was to increase the ventilation with fresh ethylene poor air a similar practical solutions to reduce loss by ethylene is given here cooling at cold temperature again important avoid excesses ethylene from external sources that can be wiping food that can also be exhaust fumes from cars or from gas forklifts ventilation with fresh ethylene poor ethylene free air that's often quite a simple measure tool to do then there are ethylene removers or converters on the market for instance in key fruit rooms reduction of oxygen elevated co2 and ca storage rooms will help and you may be familiar with inhibition of ethylene action by ethylene antagonist one mcp bit more about that so one mcp is applied in storage rooms in it here it's the ethylene action and and therefore leads to a better quality in the storage room but also later in the chain and when this is this technology is applied correctly it can indeed have several advantages for quality we use our knowledge and measurements ethylene to optimize this and to understand the one mcp effect and what we see in practice in our experiences that often it goes well but some cases this practical application can still be improved some last points i want to share with you it's about the high importance of college checks and monitoring if a quality problem is found it's so important to identify the symptoms and then find the cause of the problem is the problem is the product immature is it to wipe maybe it's a consequence consequence of water loss to less or too much do you see a problem with mechanical damage but what can be the cause of that is the physiological disorder maybe related to temperature or can we relate it back to for instance pests and only if this answer this question is answered then appropriate measures can be taken to fight losses for subsequent crops technical checks also provide a wealth of information we love the monitoring and measure what actually happens in storage rooms such as analysing this graph with one day cooling actions in a fruit storage route or measuring the temperature by use of temperature loggers in the total supply chain and this brings me almost to the end of this presentation but i want to summarize the conclusions it all begins with the good start quality pay attention to harvest maturity and reduction of mechanical injury at that part of the chain temperature and time these are the key factors in the post harvest supply chain humidity is important control of moisture depends on the commodity oxygen and CO2 these optimal conditions for oxygen and CO2 they must be chosen but always in combination with a good cold storage ethylene management is important for a number of products knowledge farmers and storage managers they must have sufficient knowledge about the products and they should also not hesitate to ask for advice or ask for training en dan de quality checks en technical checks they are in my view so important to develop better protocols and these points will bring both economical advantages and reduction of food losses thank you very much for your attention don't hesitate to contact us via email or linked in and linked in we also publish regularly publications with practical advice which can be of interest to you thank you thank you very much Hans de Wilde for this elaborate highly interesting presentation unfortunately because of the the time that you lost i would suggest that now we for now we skip the the questions and answers that resulted from your presentation and maybe after the at the end of the seminar at the webinar maybe there's some time still to address a few i just would like to make one remark about your presentation where you in your presentation you showed quite a high number of technology solutions to reduce food losses and to improve the post harvest practices with regard to packaging transportation storage and cold storage treatment of products etc as well as harvesting techniques and then you had the final remark that indeed if it all implemented well you will definitely have reduced food losses and that has an economic advantage and that is where the trick comes in because what you indicated these are all actions of good manufacturing practices the common quality management tool of good manufacturing practices but also applying these improved technologies comes with the cost and you will see often in the in the food industry that the business operator has to make a decision wat is more expensive applying good manufacturing practices and the technologies as you have indicated or accepting that maybe 10 percent of my products get lost or wasted and if the loss is cheaper than the solution to reduce the loss the the manufacturer might easily choose for accepting the loss or so that's done an economic consideration but we have to take into account that in the long run always applying good manufacturing practices increasing your quality of your operations and reducing losses in the end it will pay off but it is sometimes difficult to convince the the industry operators of this of this factor so and that makes the whole problem of food loss and waste so extremely complicated and difficult to tackle that is why it hasn't gone away yet so okay and then we go to the to the next speaker just a second the next speaker is mr. Anatoly Fahler program director of the national agency for rural development of the republic of Moldova and this this national agency the acronym is AXA is a non-governmental non-profit a non-political organization that carries out its activities throughout the entire territory of Moldova and the mission of the agency is sustainable development of rural communities by setting up and developing professional network of information consultancy and training of service providers for agricultural producers and rural entrepreneurs i mr. Fahler is going to give us an insight in a project that AXA has implemented with regard to berries in Moldova mr. Fahler the floor is yours thank you very much for my presentation Robert it's a good opportunity for us for discussion about the food loss and also i will show my presentation and present short information about one project which we make here in Moldova for Moldavian farmers why in the berry sector in the berry sector because in Moldova is the big number of the farmers and the small pieces of the land for obtained good revenue for the farmers big number of the small farmers and also the younger farmers decide to develop business in this area in berry crops we have increase of the area of berry during the five years 50 percent introducing about the short or short status of the berry will change in the Republic of Moldova we have a good tradition for cultivation and also for consumption of this product uh but the soil condition and also the climate change uh had not a good they have a very strong uh reduction of the quality and also of the quantity of this product uh good results we have for uh growing the berry in the north and central part of the Republic of Moldova why because we have a good soil condition and also less or more uh at rainfall precipitation 400 millimeter it's not very enough for obtain the uh good yield but uh i first of all i described for the our uh farmers it's very important to obtain a good yield and also obtain uh five value products who have a possibility to buy on the local market and also for export uh the structure of the area for planting of the berry crops in the Republic of Moldova we have only three crops this a more big area for production this is the strawberry, raspberry and the kura and special this is black kura and also uh niche crops such as grassberry, blackberry, blueberry, cornelian, cherry, gauze and berry uh why we decided to develop this activity for our farm because we have a loss of uh quantity of the and quality of the berry uh in particular uh for the small farmers because they didn't have a possibility to associate and make together and load the berry for example for export the principle gaps whereas the gaps of the Moldovian berry very very change first this is a planting material uh you know i think the participants know very well uh one uh the farmers often uh produce planting materials it's a big probability to obtain and not a virus free plant material and the second problem this is the lack of the variety for consecutive reasons they make a conveyor for principle variety to attend a longer period for make a good delivery and sell of the local market and also for export a third problem this is the influence of climate change the drop high temperature lack of humidity and the other problem this is the land is fragmented and pH of the soil uh it's not a little it's not the most favorable uh other problem this is a cost of shore of limbo force for example for harvest berry for strawberry the increase of the cost of final cost of the product of 25 person and for rosberry it's 33 40 person per 1 kilo also we have a problem a little bit of the internal market because the price is not good when a big number of the farmers to produce and the same time uh the barrier of the local market they didn't have uh any facility for uh make a pre cooling of these uh products and after that during of 24 uh 80 48 hour the quality of the strawberry for example or rosberry it's not a good for obtain the good price of the local market and also for external uh or export market uh how uh our project uh assurance uh uh they solve the problem for local farmer first of all we testing and introduce a new variety of different period of ripening uh remontant varieties in comparison with the local seasonal varieties uh for farmers change uh her uh variety and propose for local consumer and also for export good quality and test the fruit for example we have uh testing with one introduced variety lbwm in comparison of local variety corona or marmalada and also we provide other varieties for example selba ana belt or elba it's a new variety who is introduced here in moldova and uh uh this variety in the moment uh uh uh it's uh uh uh we uh distribute this the planting materials for local nurseries and they uh propose uh this variety for our farmer also we introduce a new variety of rosberry to women of blackberry loknest and for red currant junker van der piz here on this slide i propose for our attention uh what is comparative analysis of technological productive and economical characteristic of the variety who is introduced in moldova in comparison with the local in tradition of new variety uh we have a possibility to decrease a loss of the yield and also to increase the quality for example a new variety who is introduced in moldova local uh for local market our farmers have a possibility to buy this this uh strawberry of local market on one euro and more for one kilo uh for this reason it's a good example for the farmers to change your tone there of the soil of the sort amount of the variety and introduce a new variety to obtain growing of average of sale revenue per hectare or per small pieces of the land uh also we promote introduction of to build free planting materials and also metropropagage is the planting materials in the local condition with assurance past and diseases control because the past it's a vector of the diseases and uh uh we promote the ipm uh management of the nurseries and promote for the farmers to buy uh or to sell the planting materials only if they have certification of the planting materials also we establish a demo plot for multiplication these planting materials with adaptation weather conditions for example to use the shed net use the irrigation system and also mulching for farmers no technological aspect and to reduce a loss of uh uh also very important for the farmers to explain the techniques for planting planting of planting materials and also technological aspect for growing of the berry crops other problem who it's the resolve with our project is introducing of expert express test of ph of the soil for selecting of favorable soil condition for the future berry plantation uh our soil condition it's uh uh have a ph of uh 6.8 7.4 uh of ph of the soil but the normal condition for the berry and special for strawberry or rosberry blackberry it's uh 5.2 5.6 it's uh uh also we propose for the farmers to use uh some of amendments to assurance of ph of the soil uh we also uh promote this technique uh for obtained of uh healthy planting materials or uh introducing of new variety new technological aspect we promote and establish all farm fields too this is a good the possibility of the farmers together uh to stop her problem with the uh facilitator or a consultant of our national extension service and the also during of the few days we promote uh new varieties and the new aspect of the technology for neighbors farming for the assurance uh uh to uh uh use uh a new uh in new technological aspect in your uh production uh this is a small presentation about the our project here in Moldova uh and the moment we have four narcissists who provide and multiply make a multiplication of the planting materials of this variety and propose for the farmers and healthy planting material uh also i will show the small video about uh uh our project here in Moldova uh the first part of this video is about our problem this is the problem of lack of healthy planting materials uh influence of sorry annatori annatori very sorry to interrupt you but uh uh since uh the time is up uh i really would like to first go to the next presenter and uh dow regrettable leave the video uh for what it is at the moment if we we can always uh share the link uh with the the participants at the later stage if you don't mind i'm very sorry for that but everybody needs to have een fair share of the time to make his presentation so i because i would say that your presentation clearly illustrated how all kinds of issues arising during production of fresh produce of berries in this case how they can result later on in the harvest and post harvest phase to food losses because that's that is another thing that makes the problem food losses so complicated the the food losses in one part of the supply chain can have a cause at a different part of the supply chain for instance if you have a problem with storage of berries then the problem that food losses occur that during the storage phase the problem is not always just the quality of the storage structure and the temperature and climate control in the storage structure the problem can be that certain uh infectants or fungus have already set in in the field and if you select the right cultivation methods and you have the right varieties of the berries like you have illustrated this in your presentation that can prevent all kinds of problems to occur in the post harvest phase and can reduce losses in the post harvest phase as well um dan uh i have to go now to the our last speaker of today uh which is uh which is mr blasje josefowski he is uh with i the mcdonaldia an NGO on food security projects in north mcdonaldia uh blashe de flores thank you robert so my name is blashe josefowski i'm coming from the NGO a little bit mcdonaldia so our main mission is to work on cutting the food losses and waste waste in our country we have we are running a food circular distribution system but also other projects that are there to cut the food losses and waste and help the livelihoods of different categories of categories of citizens in our country so when we were starting we we had the previous experience with the topic but for us it for us it was very important for the country to have a strategy that can follow in order to prevent and minimize the food losses and waste that are happening in the different value chains um so we were working together with FAO in order to to make um to make a strategy that is based on uh field research and this was a long process that i i'm going to also show but the main point of this presentation is the good practices but also the bad practices of food loss and waste and how these bad and good practices are leading to food losses and waste and i hope that maybe it will help for some of you to implement this kind of activity in your country so when we were starting we needed to choose which kind of which of the value chains are we going to cover our main criteria were how much i mean what is the quantity that this product is being produced by what is the economical value of it for the livelihoods of the producers but also generally the country also what is the strategic position of the product for the country itself the expert valley and et cetera and also how stable or instant stable the value chain is and how much potentially it can produce food losses and waste so we covered three vegetable types of vegetables and three types of fruits as you can see tomato, paper and cabbage and we stationed ourselves directly in the region that was very that is the biggest producers of these these types of vegetables and we chose three types of fruits that are the biggest i mean the people who are producing the most in the country and that peach plum and apple we were using methodology that was that is developed by the FAO team for food loss and waste it was previously i think implemented only on in afrika and we were maybe one of the first that are be are implementing this kind of methodology in in macedonia as you can see we were serving we were using surveys or something we were using i mean we were interviewing all the different stakeholders in the different valley chains and we were also sampling some of them we were seeing some inconsistencies or we were doubting certain certain stuff in the valley chain i chose specific to peppers and apples as a two two examples so peppers according to the research at the end showed that it's the most stable system and later on i will show why and how good practices have made this system made this valley chain more stable than the others and then i will show you the the case of the of the apple in macedonia that are i mean the most unstable system of all unfortunately here you can see the case study for peppers if i mean from the first site you can see big numbers in different level that we that we notice there is a huge qualitative and qualitative loss this is showing that this although this is the best let's say most stable valley chain in the country still there is huge space in order for it to be more sufficient more effective to have much less food loss and waste generating at different levels i think and i'll show you later that good practice has actually helped to help to improve the past management of farmers cat to improve what is how to actually prevent the maybe even 20 percent of the product go and the loss and actually those products are being used as in processing that's just helped a lot although we are still according to us there's a huge there's a huge way in the processing part cut a lot of the a lot of the food loss and waste that occurs but it's important and if you will see the numbers that are on producer level the numbers are not so bad as the other value chains that be evaluated and this is mainly because i'm with the farmers this is some of the pictures you can see here how sorting is being how sorting is being done still in many of the cases still being done by hand and as you can see in the pictures in case of bad market or certain diseases or something else injuries till the farmers are just throwing out the and creating piles of peppers and potentially burning it together with other ways so there's a huge huge potential for improving then we're coming to apples those are the most produced fruits of vegetable in musklinia it has huge quantities and then we can see here that there's in producer level you can see that by harvesting we examine that up to 6 percent is being lost because the because the because the harvesters the pickers are not trained they are not being commons or controlled well as they should there is storage loss on their level and that's even up to 20 percent and in many cases even more just because they have insufficient storages that they're using and then up to 20 percent being lost there's huge opportunity there to be cut and then there's other levels industrial reviews and sorting and transport where this can be this can be improved so there's in all levels there is opportunity for this to be improved um just here some of the practices that the monitor so generally the field assessment shows that there is like high incendants of food loss and waste this is due to unmodernized production still use the traditional way most of the people in the in the value chains in musklinia most of the farmers 95 percent of the people that we interviewed are people above the age of 35 and not to say that they're above the age of 50 so not a lot of young people that that will try new ways of doing of doing stuff let's say that means it's hard for them to access programs they do not know how to write projects they they don't know how to improve their way of production and also something that we notice is the way how the subsidy system in musklinia works it creates very inefficient value chains and actually contributes to food loss and waste but due to political reasons it's really hard that any politician in the country will change this subsidy system so we our end result actually we we decided that there are three key areas of strategies that needs to be done in order to address the food loss and waste we need to address the low professionalism that's going on in the system of how production is being conducted then the lack of information that's not that it's a problem for everyone in the system and here a huge part of it has the state that has i would say poor way of how it forms and helps farmers on on the field and then also there is the old way of farmers how they want to get information and they're looking to go for information and there like there is really something that needs to be done here in order to approach them and of course lack of investment of different kinds as you will see are lacking and is actually creating to directly food losses and waste i mean not just the transport part but also other parts here you will still see some of the strategies that we think will address these food losses and waste but this is for musklinia and instead some of these areas in the last years there are certain actions that have been because they have shown that are good practices in order to cut food loss and waste for instance i think i see that some of the attendees have also been part of this project that as you can see it happened in 2012 but while we were doing this field research in 2019 we were able to notice that the training that NGOs have done this is i think was part of a bigger larger project has changed how almost i mean a lot of people are doing are doing their their greenhouses um for instance a lot of them are using the uve shape net and people were explaining us how a lot of training a lot of working with the local population using the right people to share the information in the local municipalities have actually helped people to see directly the results people were not believing that uh like some uve shade will create that kind of result so we really believe that trainings are a good way to work with farmers and cut food loss and waste these kind of simple uve shade shading nets have helped to improve their quality prevent sun burning en other aspects of the production because we kept also seen that incentivizing for instance operatives and people joining together and working together is something that creates great results in cutting food loss and waste the state has certain measures that is doing in order to support operatives not enough but still something is going on and there is also a lot of international donor help that's still going on in in this sector and i think it's helping uh more or less for farmers to see what are the benefits of working together i will want to show you show the some of the pictures the cooperative crani in the press region that were that i that we've seen and we talked talked with their members um first and foremost uh they did a joint sale of apple and that has cut a lot of the a lot of the food losses and waste that are occurring when there is problems with the with selling of apple unfortunately because of the old methods that the Macedonian farmers are using the old varieties that they are they are producing and other unfavorable conditions the Macedonia has a good apple year just if Poland or some of the other manufacturers producers of apples have a better year uh if not then huge quantities of apples are just being in the country being thrown everywhere and then those are thousands of thousands of apples tons of apples that are everywhere but uh even in a better year the cooperative crani has shown us that if farmers join their sale and work together with retailers and wholesales they can seriously decrease of these food laws and ways that is going on also they have cut food and laws by creating building their own water irrigation system with their own money and this has improved i mean greatly the whole value chain that they are they're being part of um so i believe that investment in cooperatives and farmers working together is a good way to cut food loss and waste uh then becoming about the lack of information apart um something that my NGO has introduced is the food loss is the food redistribution application the platform that we have built uh here you can see 13 tons of apples that this cooperative crani has donated to us so as i showed you in the previous picture they have sold a lot most of their apples and they were just they just left 13 tons and they donated to us and through our web platform that we have built uh they were able to share those and those apples together with NGOs that work with people with uh that have this need of the need of of this food and that was really quickly in a day redistributed and we showed how much technology can help actually be accessible this kind of the platforms um so yeah some information is something that is very important as you will see here um this is i mean i don't have don't have the picture but those people that may be known with um i mean agrometrological stations are very important uh and farmers getting the information on time helps really a lot for them to prepare all the measures needed so what we've seen also in the press region is that new agrometrological stations that were applied there actually um the research after that showed that it decreased spraying trees by up to 30 percent and improved a lot of the quality of the of the of the of the apples themselves um so uh just a simple sms that the farmers are getting before there is any rain or any other forecast that any alert they need to need to get it helped them so much and very cheap system that is being placed so good information in the right time from farmers is very important here there are certain measures that the state doing but i think there is a need for more um and these other programs that you can see like buy back of agricultural services this is something that uh there is some program that the state enforce but it's still not fully working so we can say that that is good um and then uh the extension service is not really working can i believe here we need some good practice in the future a lack of investment um we were reviewing park and other governmental programs um there is huge need for innovation and technological development the development and actually connecting performances of farmers with the extension services rewards and finalization in this part is a good practice we were able to see and this is not just in 2019 but uh this is even being lately a certain municipalities like in Pochini there is uh it's very visible that how rural infrastructure really helps cutting food loss and waste so i was talking to different producers here in Pochini um and the new infrastructure that was set by the by the municipality actually helped them to cut the the instance where transport has damaged the product because they're taking the products from their farm to their to their house where they're doing the sorting and the storage um also uh prosthetic capacity uh prosthetic capacities as you can see on the left picture are here this is uh in Turmica and this is one of the main reasons why the paper the paper of L.A. chain is more stable than all the others but just because new processing capacities have opened up so products that are not marketable or maybe are hard to reach any consumer even with the lower prices uh it can go for processing and this is actually uh not only cutting food loss and waste but also creating additional value of the product and is being a very important uh export export opportunity for the country uh and just new and new processing capacities are coming up uh every year and on the right here you can see a huge storage that was being was built in the press origin and this is a very or very controlled area i think they're they're monitoring very closely introducing certain gases that are help that are helping the storageing their decreasing levels of O2, CO2, everything that is needed for the apples to last for a much longer period and this is cutting a lot of food loss a lot of food loss and waste improving to how much the apples are worth and actually making more profitable for farmers and it's a good example of how storageing, how much storageing is important in this whole story that we're trying to tell and um actually i mean that that capacity on also this is now the one of i mean the only capacity of that kind it's still cutting hundreds and hundreds of tons of food loss and waste every year just because um how they how they work so more or less to learn the good examples i wanted to showcase unfortunately there is not in the area a lot of them but so there is huge opportunities for things to be done in a much much better way if you have any questions that i can answer feel free to ask. Thank you Blush thank you very much for this practical example from the field and the research that you did the work that you did on food loss and waste analysis in North Macedonia um i i have received two questions the first one it's a long long one but i'm not very sure if it is addressed to Anatoli or to Blush let me just read the question and then Anatoli or Blush je kunt zien of je het kunt vragen is van een researcher, zijn naam is Edip Alas hij werkt in het voetbouw van vegetarische verdediging in Turkije en het lijkt dat de vrouwen die hun producten produceren en de producten aan de consumeren en nu sinds de consumers buy at high prices, maar er zijn brokers in between of course traders retailers et cetera, de producer kan niet genoeg profit maken hoewel de consumer buy at a high price, dus apparenly de meeste van de value added goes to the to the brokers in between and in some years the harvest costs that is the main point the harvest cost of the product is higher than the product price in the farm price so and that leads that the farmer rather lets the product rot in the field than harvest it because otherwise he will lose money by harvesting his produce so this is an interesting situation you see that quite often happening that there is a distortion of the of the the profit and the benefits going to the to the different actors in the food supply chains and where the farmers getting the low an inequitably low price for that produce and this is causing apart from that it is unfair it is also causing food losses if the cost of harvest indeed is higher than the field price then the food will get will get will be left in the field and will get lost so the question is if you either Anatoly or Blash have experienced or have observed this situation and how can you resolve the issue what are your recommendations in this sense oké de finale of value chain, this is harvest storage and the sale of the product first of all the problem is you need to have a good planting materials adaptive of the local condition and also to decrease the cost of the planting materials and the raw materials we use for obtain finally products because the change of the climate climate change here in Moldova during the last 10 years decrease the yield or big number of the products for example 10 years ago it's not a problem to obtain a 5 6 ton of the strawberry and the moment they have a possibility to obtain 5 6 ton only if the farmers use healthy and high quality planting materials and also obligation irrigation and other problem and the loss of the food it's the conjecture of the market for example the finally price for the farmers it's a little bit a half of the final price who consumer paid other half of the price this is intermediary and that's for the farmers it's too difficult to adaptate of the market and we propose to for the farmers to make a farmers formal or informal associated to buy come on or sell come on the products and our case it's work very good for farmers group like a producers group formal group and for this group in Moldova we establish 31 cold storage more this cool storage is oriented for apple for table grapes and only two for berry but this is the opportunity for the farmers to decrease your loss of harvest or loss of yield because all right yeah i i i think this is indeed the very good recommendation that for farmers to have a stronger position in the value chain and get the right price what i produce is to organize themselves so that he can have a stronger negotiation position towards the buyers instead of every small farmer just sells in the moment that he the buyer passes by and so and at the same time if they are organized into a cooperative or an association they can also have access to they get in a cheaper way access to their inputs like the planting materials like the irrigation facilities the storage facilities et cetera and so so i think this this really answers the question of mr edip alas as well dan de de volgende vraag uit Armando Cortes ik denk dat is voor Blasch en dat is kan je meer elaborate waarom doen subsidies creëren een negatieve incentives ja dus in de keuze van Mordova de subsidies zijn connecte met hoeveel land de farmer heeft het is niet connecte van de quantities dat is dat they are producing so they are not incentivized for them to create a good quality product that is well marketed that i mean everything that is involved in that in that sense but just to have the just to have the land and in many cases many people are getting involved in agriculture in masonia that are not interested in for the production but for the subsidies themselves so they are just planting subsidized trees from the state they're just playing it and nobody i mean when a monitoring is coming they are saying cool there is there are trees there is some kind of dripping irrigation system and every year they're getting subsidies and actually they're making more money in this way than actually selling the product so we have thousands upon thousands of tons in masonia in different value chains just because of this kind of practices so in the case of masonia this kind of subsidy system has created huge manipulations a lot of forgery by the real and actually the fake producers in the country so i think that actually connecting subsidies with the quality of the product and how much it has been sold will help the professionalization of the system but also cutting the food losses and waste and this has this has proved to be right in the in the case when there were subsidies connected if the farmers are giving the products to for processing and this skills helped a lot of products to be saved from food loss and waste so i believe if the right subsidies are in the right place they can help food loss and cut food loss and waste but in this in this case and how is now in masonia everything is operating it's just discouraging the farmers i mean i would see the real farmers and it's helping let's see the fake farmers just to to make money out of working that right well this is going to bring us to the end of this webinar the setup has been searched that we first had an presentation on academic and innovative research from the Wageningen University and and then this was complimented by some by two very clear practical examples on the post harvest sector in the field from Moldova and North Macedonia en i hope that both sides both the the people working at the production level and the people working at the research level that they have benefited from each other but still i would like to give Josian and Hans a chance one minute to make a final take home message for the audience if you feel like that hi Hans do you want to go first or you're still muted thank you very much everybody i hope that your take home message is for my part is that if we organize the whole supply chain we can reach more together than and try to tackle unique single problems of course it's a start if we do so but to bring bigger chain changes we need to tackle down the entire supply chain and so yeah i hope to get in touch with you on that matter thank you very much Hans, do you have anything to add? Yeah i just maybe to add one sentence that we can think about all kind of technology, c a storage or even more sophisticated but it can also be the very small things in the total chain which can already make a difference like for instance what i told check in your temperature sensor or looking to the right for varieties or make a more efficient cooling of the product which doesn't have to cost a lot but can already make differences in reducing food losses. All right thank you again and then i will finally again thank everybody who contributed to this webinar i think it was very successful we had a very good audience we had many and a wide variety of different questions which were very to the point and they were well answered as i said before all the presentations will be shared with you as well as this whole webinar has been recorded and will be made available as well and any outstanding questions which are there will be answered by email either by us or by the panel members and of course we will share them with you and if you have any more to ask just send us or send to the panel members your questions that would be the right thing to give it some follow-up because then it will have a bigger impact and a bigger benefit for all of us. So first of all many thanks to the panel members Blaasch, Anatoly, Hans and Josiane as well as Miriam to address all these technical and practical issues in the post harvest sector in the region so professionally and so adequately well and of course i am very grateful to the the minds behind the scenes to make all this possible. First of all Oxana who organized the whole webinar and support from Linda and Roland as well as the interpreters to make this all a success and this is very encouraging for us to continue with the next webinar in this series which will be announced very soon. I wish you all a very nice afternoon en do stay in touch if you feel the need. We will be happy to address your issues. Bye bye and have a nice day.