Sweet potato marketing and estimation of post-harvest losses in kenya

The evaluation of post-harvest losses at different stages of marketing and their impact on farmers’ net price, marketing costs, margins and efficiency are presented in this study. Studies have shown that the traditional methods that are used to estimate the economic impact of post-harvest losses tend to overestimate the farmers’ net price and margins of intermediaries. In this study, the margin of retailers after taking into account the physical loss during retailing has been found to be negative, which otherwise, was a profit in the traditional estimation method. The producers’ net share and wholesalers’ margins also decreased. The results of this study indicated that marketing efficiency was inversely proportional to marketing losses. Farmer group marketing was found to be a more efficient system in operation and price terms. Marketing cost was identified as the major constraint in the wholesale marketing channel, while commission charges demonstrated in the farmer group channel, were found to help in reducing the price-spread, and hence increased the producers’ margin.