40% of farm produce lost to mishandling

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia leads in agriculture production among the GCC countries, but loses much of its produce due to post-harvest handling and food spillage.
“The Kingdom loses at least 40 percent of its agriculture produce, especially vegetables and fruits,” Riyadh-based Hans van der Beek, Dutch agricultural counselor to GCC countries, said Wednesday.
“The loss does not mean only farm produce, but also loss of water. The losses in dates alone is huge, considering that the Kingdom produces an estimate 1 million tons annually,” he said. “Now, the question is what can we do to assist Saudi Arabia in reducing these losses?”
The agriculture expert said the Netherlands has come up with a project, the aim of which is to find the bottlenecks in the value chain, such as in storage, transportation and import handling at the Customs, he said. “We want to improve the situation by helping Saudi stakeholders to identify these bottlenecks. We have done this in the Netherlands,” he said.