Post-harvest wheat losses in Africa: an Ethiopian case study Shure Seboka and Yazie Chane, Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, State University, USA

Ethiopia’s wheat farmers are the greatest producer of wheat in sub-Saharan Africa (Table 1), yet Ethiopia is not self-sufficient in its wheat production and imports an average of more than 1 million tons per annum (Index Mundi, 2016). Once a net exporter of wheat, Ethiopia is now a net importer of wheat due to many factors including war and crop failures (Hailu, 1991), as well as population growth outpacing increases in production (Reuben et al.,

Figure 1 Area and production of wheat in Ethiopia during 2008-2013. (FAOSTAT, https://faostat.fao. org/site/567/DesktopDefault.aspx?PageID=567#ancor, accessed February 2015). The new website is https://faostat3.fao.org.