ss by producing safe, high quality, shelf-stable, value-added product (tomato jam). It is very important to consider food safety when producing value-added products. Therefore, the members were also trained in Good Agricultural Practices, Good Hygiene Practices, Good Manufacturing Practices, and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point. At the end of the three weeks, the cooperative members were able to produce high quality and safe tomato jam.
Case study #2 (Household-level): Freezing, Drying, Salting and Canning in Egypt
Home food preservation is one of the most important measures to reduce food loss at the household-level. I spent three weeks in Upper Egypt—on a volunteer assignment for the USAID farmer-to-farmer program though Land O' Lakes Inc.—training more than 100 Egyptian women in home food preservation. The participants were trained on new product development, basic food preservation and the required food safety and quality considerations for different home food preservation methods including salting (feseekh, a form of salted fish that is traditionally eaten in Egypt during a national holiday), freezing (mulukhiyah), drying (apricot leather) and canning (orange and carrot jams). The training could also help the women to establish new, small-scale food processing businesses.
Developing countries should invest in value addition through low-cost food processing and/or preservation methods to reduce their food losses and therefore improve resilience, food security and nutrition. USAID should also integrate low-cost food processing and/or preservation methods into its programs to achieve the U.S. Government's Global Food Security Strategy goal (sustainably reduce global hunger, malnutrition, and poverty).
What are the main challenges that developing countries face in investing in value addition?