Rice Post Harvest Management Practices, Techniques and Losses on Income of the Farmers In North-Central, Nigeria

Abstract

Rice post harvest management and losses were the major factors affecting food availability and security in many countries due to qualitative and quantitative losses during handling operations. The multistage sampling was used to select 200 respondents. Primary data was collected using structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis were used to analyze the data. The study shows that 100% of the farmers practiced rice harvesting, threshing, winnowing, drying, bagging and transportation, while 64% of farmers practiced storage systems and 63% of the farmers market their paddy rice directly. The study also shows that 97% of farmers cut their rice 4-5cm above the ground level during harvesting, 72% of farmers threshed on bare ground. The result indicated that 99% of farmers winnowed manually, 97% dried in the field before threshing, 88% used bags for storage. The results revealed that farmers in the study area are affected by rice post harvest losses during harvesting; threshing and winnowing were significant at 1% probability level. Storage losses were significant at 5% level of probability while parboiling losses was significant at 10% probability level. The study recommends adoption of improved technologies and use of post harvest machines by the farmers to reduce losses.