Understanding postharvest loss – calling on community of experts to share what you know: Prevent PHL Blog campaign

What has remained a top recommendation for how to prevent postharvest losses around the world?

     A better understanding of the issues.

The first International Congress on Postharvest Loss Prevention Rome october 2015. DAY 2 © Francesco Vignali Photography

Experts in discussion during one of four poster sessions at the First PHL Congress © Francesco Vignali Photography for ADMI

In October 2015, a new community was formed of people who have that understanding.

Over 260 scientists, policymakers, industry leaders, practitioners, donors, educators, and students came to the table for the first time to share their knowledge and ideas at the First International Congress for Postharvest Loss Prevention. Representatives of 62 nations developed a new level of communication that is leading to better knowledge transfer, coordination, and advocacy for postharvest loss issues. This group presented research, demonstrated technologies, shared success stories from the field, and discussed critical topics. They identified next steps, built new partnerships, called for more action, and initiated a roadmap for postharvest loss prevention.

In short, this new community became THE community for postharvest loss prevention.

The aim of this blog campaign, #PreventPHL, is for the PHL Community of Practice to share knowledge with the rest of the world. With modern ICT tools, the Congress can help more people get a better understanding of the issues, as well as have the opportunity to share their own knowledge. This campaign will drive the discussion forward beyond Rome – with both PHL experts as well as those in cross-cutting disciplines such as food security, food safety, nutrition, climate change, economic development, and environmental sustainability.

The ADM Institute invites any speakers, presenters, and participants of the PHL Congress and other PHL affiliates to contribute an original blog post to the #PreventPHL blog campaign. Blogs will be shared widely and actively on the ADM Institute Preventing Postharvest Loss Blog to showcase individual work of participants and raise awareness for PHL issues and interventions. Participants may also talk about their experiences at the Congress – what they learned and how the experience will affect their research and/or implementations in the future.

Contribute to the campaign and tell our collective story of how we have already started to change the game for PHL prevention!

DETAILS ON SUBMISSION, TERMS, AND CONDITIONS

Contact: Blog entries should be submitted to phlcongress@illinois.edu

Language: English

Relevance:  All blog posts must relate to the Congress theme, developing measurement approaches and intervention strategies for smallholder farmers for postharvest loss reduction. Questions to answer include:

  • Given that technologies exist to protect harvests, why have they not been adopted around the world to reduce postharvest losses?
  • What efforts have worked to reduce postharvest losses, and what can be done to scale them up?
  • What are promising approaches and frameworks towards reducing postharvest losses?
  • What should be included in the roadmap towards reducing postharvest losses by 2050?
  • What benefits came from the 2015 PHL Congress and what can be done to strengthen the PHL Community of Practice?

Eligible Authors: The primary author of this post must be a professional, practitioner, researcher, or someone directly involved in the project. Authors may seek editorial assistance from their communications staff/colleagues. However, the primary aim of this campaign is to allow experienced experts to share knowledge of postharvest loss prevention initiatives with a global audience, showing the power of social media is raising awareness, building capacity, and addressing challenges.

Submissions, workflow, and publication: Each author may submit ONE blog post. Each submission must be an original blogpost. We will not accept blogposts which were previously published unless they were re-edited into a completely new post.

Each submitted blogpost will be acknowledged by email.

Blogposts will be published on the Preventing Postharvest Loss Blog within 5 days after submission.
The author will be advised by email once the blog is online.

Timeline

Dec 13 (extended)                  Submission deadline

Dec 31                                     All submissions posted

Length: Blog posts may be a maximum of 800 words (though shorter is often better!)

Photos: 1-2 photos must be submitted with the blog post along with a caption and photo credit. The photo must be taken by the author. In case an appropriate picture cannot be found, a generic picture will be used, chosen from public libraries via Flickr. You may also choose to use photos from the Congress if appropriate, however it will be more interesting to use photos from in the field. You can view, select and download Congress photos here.

Format: Blogs should be submitted in MSWord, pictures should be submitted in .jpg (or .png, .tiff). The submitted text should NOT contain complex formatting (e.g. tables) and include links to original research publications (blogposts, scientific publications, and other online resources).

The submitted posts should include:

  • the name, title and email address from the submitting authors), his/her/their organization
  • the picture caption (Picture captions should NOT be photoshop-ped into the picture itself)
  • the picture attribution (name of the photographer and organization)

Comment moderation: Blog entries might generate significant feedback or comments, via the blogpost comments section. Contributing authors are encouraged to monitor the comments on their competition blog entries, and to answer/moderate them through the comments section.

Style and editing

We encourage enticing blog submissions, which make interesting reading, spark online debates and conversations via the comments, and above all: inspire people. Check out these tips on blog writing.

Posts might be edited for factual accuracy, formatting and grammar by the blog editing team, after submission.

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2 Responses to Understanding postharvest loss – calling on community of experts to share what you know: Prevent PHL Blog campaign

  1. NeverIdle storage December 15, 2015 at 6:22 am #

    With regard to links, ADMI Comments appear to NOT be WYSIWYG.
    Although embedded and external links are live in ADMI Posts… user tests suggest either with ” ” or without demarkation external (and text) or embedded links are striped out in ADMI Comments after they are submitted.

    External not demarkated
    “Step One to Fighting Ebola – Start with Corruption”
    http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/16/step-one-to-fighting-ebola-start-with-corruption/?_r=0

    External demarkated
    “Step One to Fighting Ebola – Start with Corruption”

    Embeded
    “Step One to Fighting Ebola – Start with Corruption”

  2. NeverIdle storage December 14, 2015 at 1:34 pm #

    Thank you for fixing comments and the front page links.and why are links in comments not surviving the moderation process?

    William

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