Chapter 1 - Postharvest systems—some introductory thoughts

Abstract

Postharvest systems are open systems that deliver sorted, segregated, packaged, and market-appropriate products to consumers in selected, sometimes very distant locations. They are subsystems of food systems—impermanent, shifting networks of enormous reach, connection, and complexity. Postharvest systems thinkers use holism, reductionism, and modeling using explicit and approximate knowledge to explore system behaviors. Their goal is to design, engineer, and manage behaviors of high-performing postharvest systems. Such systems are likely to work effectively with information to support marketing, quality assurance, and postharvest operations. They continually learn how to better meet new conditions, maximizing use of virtuous cycles to deliver innovation. Ongoing discoveries about the human microbiome seem likely to reshape perceptions of fresh produce quality over the coming decades. Technologies such as blockchain may provide a new basis for trust among participants in postharvest systems. Postharvesters with strong systems thinking and management skills will be central to improved access to fresh fruits and vegetables for the world’s peoples everywhere. They will face challenges of meeting further growth in global demand for food in ways that avoid further losses to sustainability of the global ecology. If you are a postharvester, this volume can open new ways for you to influence the health-, wealth-, and food-focused social and commercial exchanges among the peoples of the world.