Fighting Africa’s food waste: what women farmers in Tanzania are doing to reduce crop spoilage – and hunger

An estimated 23 percent of available food in Sub-Saharan Africa is lost or wasted, mainly because farmers do not have adequate means for processing and storing crops. Farmers, particularly women, are experimenting with solutions to this problem in Tanzania, and ideas are starting to spread. Rachel will look at how crop losses impact subsistence farmers and their families, and she’ll explore some of the tools and projects being developed in rural Tanzania to preserve more of the harvest. She’s focusing on women because they do most of the subsistence farming in Sub-Saharan Africa, and because some studies have shown them to be more ready and willing to adopt new tools, at least when it comes to reducing food loss.

Rachel Cernansky is a freelance journalist based in Denver who focuses on the environment and humanitarian issues. A New York native, she has also lived in Boulder, Kenya, Rwanda and Australia. Her stories have been published by 5280 Magazine, National Geographic News, Matter, Grist, Civil Eats, Smithsonian.com and others. She has a B.S. in nutrition from New York University and an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University.