Returns to investment in reducing postharvest food losses and increasing agricultural productivity growth: Post-2015 Consensus

In this paper, we seek to better understand the levels of investment required to effectively reduce PHL. Doing so requires a series of steps. First, it is necessary to understand how infrastructure impacts losses. This can be done via econometric analysis (see section 3 for details). Given the diversity of regions and countries in the world, the gains obtained from reducing losses in the presence of infrastructure require that investments in infrastructure be made so that countries and regions can achieve desired levels of reduction in losses. The second step is to quantify the levels of investments required, which can be done by combining marginal effect analysis (based on the econometric estimation) with data on unit costs for specific infrastructural variables. Third and finally, it is essential to undertake a cost-benefit analysis of the required infrastructural investments to assess whether or not significant efforts in PHL reduction are economically feasible. This last step is done using the International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI’s IMPACT model).