The purpose of the Rapid Loss Appraisal Tool for agribusiness value chains is to provide a sufficiently accurate pre-screening tool for identifying intervention points along agribusiness value chains (VC), working out incentives for VC operators and proposing measures to reduce pre- and post-harvest losses. The tool supports the design of concrete interventions that have
the primary aim of improving food security at the subsistence level, either on farms or in communities, and the secondary aim of upgrading specific VCs.
The tool supports:
- the pre-screening of qualitative and quantitative food losses and their hotspots (critical loss points) in local/regional VCs, including self-consumed food;
- the identification of leverage points for reducing food losses along VCs (pre- and post-harvest) and the gathering of sufficient evidence for initiating
interventions;
- the identification of information gaps to support the planning of more detailed studies on losses and their impacts, on possible loss reduction measures as well as on incentives that would engage private and public sector stakeholders in addressing food losses.

The Rapid Loss Appraisal Tool for agribusiness value chains has been developed by the Sector Project Sustainable Agriculture (NAREN), implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit
(GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Three of German development cooperation’s agricultural programmes supported the piloting of the tool in Ghana, namely the Market-Oriented Agriculture Programme (MOAP) and African Cashew initiative (ACi), both in Ghana, and the programme on
Food Security and Development of Agricultural Markets (FSDAM) in South Sudan.