Philippines: IRRI postharvest staff participate in farmcasters meeting in Agusan Province

Curbing postharvest losses through information is in the front line of the IRRI-ADB project, Addressing the Pre-and Postharvest Challenges in the Rice Supply Chain.
Information officers, farmcasters, regional agricultural engineers, and staff members of some local government units were introduced to advocacy efforts of the project made through various activities, technologies, and adaptive research in project sites in the Philippines and Asia.

Members of the project team from IRRI and PhilRice served as resource speakers during the 3rd Quarter Meeting of Regional and Provincial Information Officers and Farmcasters at Patin-ay, Prosperidad, Agusan del Sur, on 19-20 July 2011.
Caesar Tado, IRRI-ADB project country coordinator, and Trina Mendoza and Reianne Quilloy, communication specialists at IRRI, took turns elaborating on the objectives and activities of the project.

Danilo Unson, on behalf of the provincial agriculturist, said that reducing postharvest losses could be an important driver of the Philippines’ goal to achieve rice self-sufficiency in 2013.

Vietnam: Workshop held on paddy storage for the Mekong Delta

A  workshop on paddy storage was conducted in Can Tho, Vietnam, on 30 June-1 July to raise the quality of Vietnam export rice through an updated postharvest system.
Vietnam is a major rice-producing country and the second largest exporter with milled rice exports reaching 6.8 million tons in 2010. However, due to lack of dryers and insufficient storage facilities, physical postharvest losses average 13.7%.

Prof. Werner Mühlbauer, a renowned postharvest expert, presented state-of-the-art warehouse storage and silo technology, and shared his experiences on grain storage in Europe and the US, and paddy storage in tropical countries like Thailand, Korea, and the Philippines.

The IRRI team, led by Martin Gummert, visited processing and storage plants to further evaluate the problems in quality of milled rice and storage systems.

The participants actively shared their observations and views on how to improve the postharvest system in their country.

One participant mentioned that introducing good agricultural practice can aid stakeholders to provide market incentives to enable producers come up with better rice quality.

The outcome of the events will become recommendations for strategies to improve postharvest processing and storage for minimized losses contributing to food security and increased quality for local consumption and exports.

The seminar was conducted through the Vietnam Postharvest Learning Alliance, which is funded through IRRI by the Asian Development Bank with co-funding form the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. It was coordinated by the Vietnamese collaborators spearheaded by the Nong Lam University.