We review existing studies on rice harvest loss from the aspects of estimation methods, magnitudes, causes, effects, and interventions. The harvest losses examined occurred from the field reaping to storage processes, including threshing, winnowing, and field transportation. We find that existing studies on rice harvest losses have focused on quantitative losses in Asia and Africa. Lack of knowledge, inadequate harvesting techniques, poor infrastructure, and inefficient harvest management practices are considered critical contributors to the losses. The magnitudes and causes of rice harvest losses are now better understood than interventions, which have simply been presented but lack an assessment of the effects and a cost–benefit analysis. Interestingly, reduction in harvest losses may threaten some farmers’ profits, such as rural women who make their living from post-production manual operations. Considering the current status of the literature, future researchers should examine how to balance social and individual welfare since farmers are key stakeholders in intervention implementation. A good understanding of the existing researches can help clarify future efforts for loss reduction, thereby reducing the burden of increasing agricultural production and promoting sustainable development of resources and the environment.

Reducing food losses has become an important means of conserving resources and protecting food security. Based on nationwide survey data from 1526 households in 17 provinces in China, we evaluated Chinese rice harvest losses and used a fractional logit model to analyze the impact of farm size on these losses. The results show that, on average, 3.45% of total rice was lost during the harvest stage, representing a serious waste of resources. In addition, farm size was significantly negatively correlated with rice harvest losses, indicating an inverse relationship between farm size and rice harvest losses. As farms expand in size, farmers are more likely to adopt agricultural machinery services, which have been proven to reduce harvest losses. Our findings show that the government should encourage farm size expansion and promote better agricultural machinery services to reduce harvest losses.

This study uses survey data from 651 farmers in China to study the impacts of moral hazard on rice harvest losses and we further study the differences of the impacts across farm scales. The results show that large-scale farms have lower harvest losses and the service providers have more serious attitude when harvesting. After addressing the endogeneity of moral hazard using instrumental variable approach, moral hazard increases harvest losses. However, this impact diminishes as farm size increases. These findings demonstrate the need to reduce moral hazard by increasing farm size, introducing intermediaries, and written contracts, etc.