Developing greener food value chains: environmentally friendly tomato post-harvest operations in four cities

The main aim of the study was to attempt to better understand environmentally friendly tomato post-harvest operations provided by micro- and small-scale farmers and traders in the context of bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) peri-urban and urban areas of four major cities: Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Nairobi (Kenya), Tunis (Tunisia), and Cairo (Egypt). The study was initiated with an in-depth literature review and was followed by in-country, unstructured, informal, one-to-one interviews with a random number of micro- and small-scale farmers and traders and pictographic observations of table tomato post-harvest operations. The findings of the study provided a sample of practices and ‘innovations’ in post-harvest operations that used prevalently recycled post-harvest equipment, sparingly used natural resources, such as water, and powered operations using only energy of human origin. The findings ranged from the use of home-made sand filters for water purification, to large green leaves for ‘refrigeration’, to recycled paint buckets being used as ‘solar ovens’. Waste was averted continually and if it did occur waste was recycled. The findings of the study contributed to increasing knowledge and consequently provided for a better understanding of practices that can potentially contribute to developing more environmentally friendly (greener) food value chains.