Would better metal and mobile storage be food security? --WTLanier (talk) 17:11, 3 February 2014 (PST) It is easy to search the web and read at for example the "ADM Institute for the Prevention of Post-harvest Loss" how African staple grain value chains are weak from Post-harvest loss (PHL). Even though solutions to PHL that improve food security are available, African smallholder growers suffer solutions that only increase production. Poor Post-harvest management wastes crops —and inputs, especially smallholder drudgery that contributed to producing the wasted crop. The lack of a more meaningful input like storage stops the utility of tractors, seeds, fertilizers and pesticides from reaching smallholders and improving food security.
Without storage, disadvantaged smallholders must sell into the harvest glut or suffer PHL. For smallholders without land tenure, who are confronting diverse politics and cultures and climate change, investing in stationary storage is risky. When lack of tenure shifts smallholders, activities like growing and harvesting shift also, but storage designed to be stationary does not. Moving warehouses or large metal silos is not cost effective and so for example 80% of Ghana's Government stationary rural storage is distant and obsolete (GCAP). Like Kenyans (BDaily), few Ghanaians are adopting warehouse receipt systems (WRS) because WRS do not help the small holder (World Bank 60371) market the harvest. Obsolescence and naivety are not solutions to PHL, drudgery or food insecurity, but for example Grain Councils and NGOs promote them. Now, designed with integral wheels, metal storage bins are shifting (when empty) with smallholder growing and harvesting activities. Inside mobile storage, harvest is off the ground, under a roof and hard for insects to eat. Metal storage also mitigates Aflatoxins, a poison produced by a mold that is known to cause liver cancer and compromise immune functions in animals and humans. Now small holders can maintain volume and quality while waiting tactically for better prices because PHL has been replaced with marketing. Soon, investing in storage is profitable because smallholders can market strategically and the utility of tractors, seeds, fertilizers and pesticides reach and strengthen smallholder value chains. Compare the opportunity cost of "obsolete - distant - stationary" with "adopted - local - mobile" storage utility and marketing utility. Then remove the expense of wasted fertilizer and pesticide to the environment and bank the social benefits of less drudgery. Finally, invest meaningful inputs to overcome weak links in value chains and age-old challenges to National food security. Consider how coffee is to cup, networks are to phones and how smallholders need storage and marketing. Buying coffee in a travel cup or a mobile phone has very high utility, regardless of location, politics or diverse cultures. Even though mobile storage only shifts when empty… it's cup like - low opportunity cost offers mobile phone like - very high storage and marketing utility for the smallholder.
If smallholders had tactical storage and strategic marketing, would they deliver more food security, for better prices, at ready markets - more times?
Would better storage give smallholders the advantage needed to confront the obsolete and naive reasons causing food insecurity across Africa?
-
Metal mobile storage bin1
-
Caption2
Notes and references
GCAP "Ghana Commercial Agriculture Project Appraisal", Page 56, starting #61 and Page 130 Bullet 6 and 12-C. #35
BDaily "Poor storage puts a damper on maize farmers’cash prospects", Business Daily Africa
World Babnk "MISSING FOOD: The Case of Postharvest Grain Losses in Sub-Saharan Africa", page 34, text box 3.5 World Bank 60371
Know also
- http://publish.illinois.edu/phlinstitute/category/phl-in-the-news-archive/by-region/africa/
- African for Field bins.
- utility is 1. useful, esp. through being able to perform several functions. "a utility truck" and 2. functional rather than attractive "utility clothing" or "utility knife".]
- African for Field bins.
Interwiki links
- Wikipedia:
- []
External links
- []