Ever stopped at your local market to purchase some mangoes and your vendor had some mangoes that seem not consumable due to the fact that they have over ripened? So you tell them that you will not pick them and ask for something else instead of the mangoes then proceed to a different vendor and pick your mangoes and go home. Have you ever asked yourself where those mangoes go to? The answer is to the dustbin or a pit just by the roadside, right?

Did you know that for every mango you consume one mango goes into waste?

Those mangoes you refused to purchase due to their condition goes to the bin as you pick an equal amount and go home.

50 to 41% of the mango produce goes into waste due to supply chain inefficiencies. So, is it possible to reduce the waste of mangoes to a lower percentage or even have 0% loss?

Let’s take a look at the following areas and so that we can achieve minimizing the losses,

  1. Harvest

Harvesting of mangoes is a crucial stage towards minimizing losses, should mangoes be dropped to the ground then collected? This is so convenient, you just shake the trees and the mangoes fall you just pick them up. What you do know is “reduced your work” but in real sense what you have done is that you have damaged the shelf life of those fruits.

Mangoes should be harvested in a manner that the fruits are not falling to the ground. So this should involve use of machinery or someone climbing the trees with a ‘kiondo’ or an open basket, this might be slower but it reduces the damage that occurs when you drop the mangoes to the ground.

  • Packaging

This revolves arrangement of the mango fruits, sacks are convenient and cheap, but when it comes to proper packaging sacks should be avoided because the fruits end up squeezing each other and pressing the ones at the bottom, leading to damage.

Mangoes should

  • Transporting

Mangoes/fruits should not just be bundled on our car trunks and just drive as fast as a miraa vehicle. They should be treated with utmost care almost like eggs; I know that you have carried eggs from one destination to the other and the way, you see the way one drives carefully you don’t break anyhow, you avoid potholes and maneuver around the bumps and ditches, that it the same care that fruits should be given to avoid them hitting each other as this makes them starts rotting and that leads to wastage.   

  • Storage

We in most cases just store our fruits in our store and for those in upcountry have the luxury of putting them in their granaries. That’s how we store the mangoes but the question is how long will they take in that granary without over ripening?

Mangoes should be stored in a cool dry place/room this helps lengthen their shelf life. By storing fruits in our cold storage, finding buyers through market linkage activities, and working with a processor to offtake rejects, we have managed to off-take and use 100% of the farmers’ produce - increasing food security and farmer resiliency.  

One of the cheapest ways of storage that local fruit vendors can store their produce by simply using two metallic buckets/jars that are of different size then between the buckets/jars use charcoal then add water respectively.  That is one of the ancient methods of storage that can be employed by fruit vendors who might not have the resources to purchase refrigerators.