ECONOMIC STUDY TO ESTIMATE POST-HARVEST LOSSES FOR YELLOW CORN IN IRAQ (BABYLON PROVINCE IS AN APPLIED MODEL FOR RESEARCH)

Agriculture in Iraq suffers from the phenomenon of increasing the percentages of loss in agricultural products and a decrease in the percentage of manufactured ones, where the areas cultivated with this crop in Iraq for the period (2000/2018) amounted to (8720271 thousand dunums) and the total production amounted to (6259970 thousand tons), with an average amounted to (329,472 thousand tons), with an average loss of 913.3819 tons from this quantity. In Babylon province, data indicate that the total area for the same period amounted to (2192315 thousand dunums), with productivity of (1620 685 thousand tons), an average amounted to (85299 thousand tons), and an average of loss from the original quantity amounted to (126.68 tons). The results indicated that the percentage of post-harvest loss constituted 11.75% at the level of farms and receiving centers (1.5%, which their percentage constituted 12.76% from the percentage of total loss and 10.75%, which their percentage constituted 87.21% from the percentage of total loss), respectively for each of them. Thus the economic importance of losses after harvest becomes evident from one of the priorities of the study when it is linked to the loss of economic resources, which is a waste of the resources that were used in their production as well as the losses achieved for both farms and factories, The importance and seriousness of this problem can be realized, whenever we know that the rate of production growth in the agricultural sector did not reach (2%), and with estimating the economic impact of the loss at the level of farms and receiving centers, it was found that the total lost quantity amounted to (1,492 thousand tons), which its financial values amounted to ( 2.663.780,000 dinars), depending on the official purchase and sale prices of the crop from farmers specified by the state for the season (2019/2020).