The harvest you lose after the harvest
Grain lost between the field and the market was already paid for — in land, in water, in fertiliser, in labour. It is the most expensive grain on the farm, and the easiest to keep.
Post-Harvest
Every discussion of raising production starts in the field. But grain lost after cutting has already consumed the whole season's inputs — the irrigation, the fertiliser, the labour, the land. Recovering it adds nothing to the cost of production at all. It is the only yield increase that is free.
Most of it comes down to water. Grain stored above roughly fourteen percent moisture is not really stored; it is incubating. Moulds establish, insects breed faster, and the damage compounds in the dark over months. Drying properly before storage settles most of the question before it is asked.
Storage then decides what happens next. A sealed container that keeps air out will kill storage insects without a single chemical, because they exhaust the oxygen and stop. It also keeps moisture from creeping back in during the monsoon, which is what defeats an open sack in a humid room.
None of this is new technology, and that is the point. The gap between what is known about drying and storage and what is practised in an ordinary village store is where the loss lives — which makes it a question of extension and of cash at harvest, not of research.