Postharvest Losses in Rice
Do you know how many tons of rice that go to waste every year in Indonesia? BPS (Badan Pusat Statistik), The Statistical Body of Indonesia reported that in 1996 the postharvest losses of rice in Indonesia were still so high : 20,42% or equal with 6,2 million tons of rice every year. Assuming that the price of rice per kilogram is Rp 4000, this losses represents 25 billion rupiahs that becomes waste. In terms of inputs, this means that one tenth to one half of all the land, money and labour utilised to produce agricultural products are useless.
Postharvest losses of rice is looses of rice during harvest and postharvest includes harvesting, processing, storing and distributing rice to the consumers. Every stage of rice processing contributes to a high amount of rice looses. According to BPS, losses at harvesting time accounts 9,5%, 4,85 in threshing, 2,2% in milling, 2,1% in drying, 1,6% in storage and 0,2 % during distribution.
A high postharvest losses rate in rice production could be attributed to several factors.
The first cause is technical, many farmers use traditional sickle when they harvest the rice. The form and the shape of sickle that is widely used by them are not suitable with the morphological structure of the rice trees. This causes many rice cannot be harvested and fall down to the ground. The other reason is there are many farmers that thresh they paddy using traditional method called “gepyok” (Javanese) or “gebot” (Sundanese). They hit the paddy to some tables from bamboo and let the rice seeds fall down leads to many rice goes away because the wind blow up the rice before hitting to the tool. The drying stage also contribute to large amount of looses because of the utilisation of the sunlight as a main dryer. This method are not suitable in the rain season when the sunlight does not appear every day. It leads to spoilage of rice due to improper drying.
The improper method of storage also tend to reduce the amount of rice provided every year. Many farmers do not have a good storage facility. This causes many rice are easily attacked by insect. The lack of facilities also reduce the quality of rice. In conclusion, there are many reasons that make million tons of rice go to waste every year. The government have to assist and educate the farmers to improve their skills in handling the rice. There is no other option if we want to provide the good and enough food for all people.
Fahrizal Yusuf Affandi 