Losses in the Transportation of Fruits and Vegetables: A Brazilian Case Study

Abstract

ABSTRACT Transportation modeling approaches have not necessarily taken into consideration the eventual losses incurred during the transportation of agricultural products. A normative mathematical programming model was developed to deal with transportation losses and was applied to a typical cross section of the movement of selected fresh fruits and vegetables in Brazil. Despite the barriers to be overcome, results indicate that implementation of new technological options for diminishing losses would first benefit the consumer at the wholesale market. Additional benefits from diminishing losses are related to changes in the marketing structure of the business.