According to estimates mentioned in a paper on agricultural wholesale markets in Pakistan, released by the Asian Development Bank, Pakistan could save about $1.13 billion annually by reducing up to 75 percent of the current post-harvest losses.
The annual value of post-harvest losses of potato, tomato, peas, cauliflowers, carrots, turnips, radish, brinjal, squash, okra, onion, grapes and mango in Balochistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh, valued at the respective 2016 provincial wholesale prices, is about $700 million to $934m.
The Rural Development and Food Security (Agriculture) Section of ADB, led by Akmal Siddiq, suggests that post-harvest losses in fruits and vegetables due to mishandling of the perishable product, poor transportation, and inadequate storage facilities and market infrastructure account for about 30 to 40pc of total production.
However, there is a severe lack of reliable and timely data on production in Pakistan making it hard for the government to undertake effective actions related to export, import, public procurement of crops, or provision of advisory services to farmers to stabilise agricultural prices.
Transport
Vegetables and fruits are transported by the same cart or truck from farms to the main markets in the absence of specialised vehicles for specific products. The same vehicle is used for many other purposes, including animal transportation. However, recently reefer trucks have been introduced on a limited scale in some parts of Pakistan.
Fruits and vegetables are packed using local materials before shipment, and in most cases such packaging fails to preserve the freshness and quality of the products. Another problem is absence of cooling and packaging centers, and inadequate cold storage facilities to preserve the produce at or near the wholesale markets.
