Valuing postharvest losses among tomato smallholder farmers: evidence from Ghana

Figures & data

Figure 1. Map of the study area.

Table 1. Summary of farmers’ characteristics

Variable	Min	Max	Mean	Std. Dev
Age of respondent	25	68	43.14	10.78
Gender (1= male)	0	1	0.85	.356
Household size	1	10	5.29	1.97
Age of fruit at harvest	3	14	6.62	1.56
Experience	1	40	14.66	8.56
Farm size (ha)	0.16	1.6	0.67	0.58
Quantity harvested	1600	33000	9763.16	6759.66
Education level	0	4	1.49	1.01
Cost of labour (GH₵)	100	3500	803.16	543.14
Cost of fertilizer (GH₵)	100	2800	698.18	462.04
Cost of Agrochemicals (GH₵)	100	3000	659.89	359.89
Cost of transportation (GH₵)	90	2100	601.71	410.39
Storage facility (= 1, if use)	0	1	0.034\	0.207
Available market (= 1, if unreliable)	0	1	0.665	0.361
Long distance to farm (= 1, if longer)	0	1	0.148	0.477
Post-harvest loss value (GH₵)	470	11450	3598.71	2345.06

Source: Authors’ calculation based on survey, 2021.

Figure 2. Conceptual framework on the linkage between post-harvest losses and the determinants, the quantity loss and the corresponding financial value, and the effects of post-harvest loss on the revenue of producers.

Source: Authors’ construct based on literature review.

Table 2. Analysis of quantitative losses and financial value of postharvest losses for the 2020 tomato cropping season

Variable	Major season	Minor season	t-test
Land Area (ha)	1.68	1.68	0.0
Quantity Harvested (kg)	6625	3092	9.1368
Quantity lost (kg)	2803 (42.4%)	703.2 (22.6%)	19.7823
Quantity sold (kg)	3821.3	2388.8	4.7663
Unit price (GH₵/100 kg)	51.61	307.70	−26.9070
Revenue obtained (GH₵)	1,960.80	7,384.80	−9.5453
Value of losses (GH₵)	1,444.80	2,153.90	−6.0828
Potential revenue (GH₵)	3,405.60	9,538.70	−9.3857

Source: Authors’ calculation based on survey, 2021 kindly use *** to indicate significant levels in the t-test.

Table 3. Primary Causes of Postharvest Losses

Causes	Frequency		Percentage (%)
	YES (1)	NO (0)	YES (1)	NO (0)
Rot	203	0	100	0
Bruises	200	3	98.5	1.5
Diseases	135	68	66.5	33.5
Poor handling	54	149	26.6	73.4
Malformed fruits	111	92	54.7	45.3

Source: survey, 2021.

Table 4. Secondary causes of postharvest losses

Causes	Very high (5)	High (4)	Moderate (3)	Low (2)	Very low (1)	Mean rank	Rank
Lack of available market	118	53	25	7	-	4.83	1st
Long distance to farm	108	54	29	12	-	4.60	2nd
Bad road networks	46	86	62	5	4	3.89	3rd
Lack of processing facility	6	44	139	14	-	2.76	4th
Type of variety used	17	33	93	51	6	2.52	5th
Poor harvesting technique	19	26	95	49	14	2.40	6th

Source: survey 2021.

Table 5. Fractional response estimates of the determinants of postharvest losses in tomato production

Share of phl	Coefficient	Robust std. error	P>z
Age	−0.001	0.005	0.790
Level of education	0.049	0.028	0.072*
Available market	0.232	0.069	0.001***
Lack of storage	0.048	0.122	0.693
Gender	−0.084	0.080	0.294
Marital status	0.001	0.072	0.984
Years in field	0.001	0.006	0.910
Farm size	−0.042	0.016	0.008***
Age of fruit at harvest (days)	0.000	0.017	0.986
Constant	−0.066	0.274	0.808
Prob > chi2	0.000
Pseudo R2	0.0110
Wald chi2(9)	45.09
Log pseudo likelihood	− 130.17254

Note: *** & * represent significance level at 1% & 10%, respectively. phl represents postharvest loss.

Table 6. Box-cox regression estimates for the effect of postharvest loss on the revenue of tomato producers

	Coefficient	Chi^2(df)	P-value
Labour cost	0.002	1.898	0.168
Transportation cost	−0.00584	3.877	0.049**
Agrochemical	0.001377	0.129	0.719
Quantity harvested	0.425312	107.661	0.000***
Fertilizer cost	−0.00024	0.009	0.926
Value of Postharvest loss	−0.010758	35.327	0.000***
_cons	58.39635
/sigma	2.982
/lambda	0.1643	0.0485	0.001
lambda =	−2503.81	398.93	0.000
lambda =	−2309.81	10.92	0.001
lambda =	−2447.42	286.14	0.000
Prob > chi2			0.000

Note: *** & ** represent significance level at 1% & 5%, respectively.

Source: survey, 2021.

Data availability statement

Data will be made available by the Corresponding Author on request