Assessing technologies farmers use to manage post-harvest losses in tomatoes in Bumalimba sub-county, Sironko district

Abstract

This report is about assessing the modern post-harvest handling technologies that tomato farmers use to minimise pre and post-harvest losses with introduction giving an over view about pre and post-harvest losses, the problem statement of the study, objectives, research questions, significance, justification, scope and limitations of the topic under study. It further gives detailed information about tomato production, pre and post-harvest losses from global production to regional production of tomatoes and their importance. It also describes the study area which was Bumalimba sub-county found in sironko district where, study approaches of data collection where used both qualitative approach which was used through interviews and observation to find out other theoretical data which was needed to carry out this study and quantitative approaches which was used to collect numeric data which can measured using different scales like ratio and ordinal scales, study design where cross sectional survey design was used to collect both qualitative and quantitative data which involved random sampling of respondents from the recommended sample size of 90 respondents, both men and women were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire and analysis of the field data collected from the respondents for the three objectives was analysed through SPSS using descriptive statistics where different frequencies and percentages were reported in tabular form. This report contains the findings of the study where more youths, male in gender with lower levels of education engage more in tomato production. It further reports about the three objectives where the findings indicate that the respondents level of awareness about modern PHHT, rate of their application is moderate and major factors limiting the use of these technologies was absences, lack of awareness of some of these technologies and high costs of purchase and maintenance of the available technologies. Finally, this reports tells us about the conclusions of the study which is that there is still a knowledge gap about modern PHHT amongst farmers which needs to be covered through increasing on the levels of sensitization, recruiting more extension officers and policy makers to reduce on the taxes charged on during the importation of these technologies so as to keep their prices low so that farmers can easily purchase them.