SEAsian countries take part in resolving post-production losses

Six countries are participating in this year’s first offering of the Rice: Post-Production to Market Course at IRRI Headquarters. The 12-day course organized by IRRI Training started on 28 April, and will end on 9 May 2014 

Rice: Post-Production to Market Course addresses the problem of post-production losses that causes deprivation of food security and income to farmers and other chain actors. Wanting to improve their country’s rice post-production gain, 16participants from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, and Thailand participated in the said course.

During the training, participants will have hands-on experience with harvesting and other post-harvest procedures. According to Alfred Schmidley, course co-coordinator and Business Model & Value Chain Specialist, letting participants have hands-on activities do not just train them but make them appreciate the hard work associated with rice farming.

By the end of the course, they will receive a certificate classifying them asqualified evaluators and introducers of garnered rice knowledge.  The participants are expected to be capable of evaluating sources of post-production losses, and the different techniques to manage preventable losses. They must also be familiar with the IRRI Quality Kit used in assessing paddy, milled rice and seed. They must be able to assess rice market and rice standard quality, and design a project and business plan.

Since they will be introducing new knowledge, they will also be taught how to use the Rice Knowledge Bank (RKB), a free-access website that stores all rice science information from experiments in IRRI. 

RKB is a resource in teaching rice farming especially post-production techniques.

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