Would meaningful storage let smallholders confront the distant and naive reasons for Postharvest loss?' --WTLanier (talk) 02:08, 10 February 2014 (PST)
It is easy to search the web and read (ADM, 2013) how African staple grain value chains are weak from Postharvest loss (PHL). Even though initiatives brag about available solutions to PHL that improve food security (WFP, 2013 and AgResults 2014)), growers suffer AID and political inputs that only increase gross production (Aid Amnesia, 2014). Poor Postharvest storage wastes production — and related inputs, especially grower drudgery that contributed to producing the wasted crop.
Growers must suffer PHL or sell into the harvest glut because investing in stationary rural grain storage is risky. Without Land tenure, erratic politics and/or climate change may shift growers. Growing activities like seeding, pest management and harvesting adapt easily, but storage designed to be stationary does not adapt. Moving warehouses or large metal silos is not cost effective and so 80% of Ghana Government stationary rural storage is distant and obsolete (GCAP, 2012).
Distant and obsolete storage stops the utility* of inputs like political and AID tractors, seeds, fertility and pest management from improving food insecurity.
Like Kenyans (BDaily, 2014), few Ghanaians are participating in naive marketing that is urban warehouse receipts systems (WRS) because WRS do not help the grower (World Bank, 2013).
Naive urban WRS forces grower net income to suffer local harvest glut prices.
Now, designed with integral wheels, mobile storage** is adapting with grower activities. Inside mobile storage, harvest is off the ground, under a roof and hard for insects or mold (Metal storage) to damage. Instead of naïve marketing, mobile storage lets growers wait tactically for prices. Soon, investing strategically in storage that adapts is profitable (Growing Africa, 2013) and the utility of inputs improves food security.
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Metal mobile storage bin
Notes and references
Mobile storage comes in many sizes (15 - 50 tonnes):1. is sack (hermetic or sisal) friendly; 2. is designed for bulk handling dry and clean staple grains and animal feed etc; 3. works (lease or sell) for less than storage on trucks and wagons because they are too expensive to park; 4. moves (when empty) using integral wheels to where storage is needed, unlike warehouses and stationary silos that may be empty because of politics, diverse cultures or climate change; 5. reduces postharvest (and related input) loss so growers eat, process, sell more of what they grow, for better prices, at ready markets - more times.
- ADM 2013 (ADM Institute for the Prevention of Postharvest Loss)
- AgResults Initiative 2014 (Dailey Nation, Nairobi)
- AID Amnesia, 2014 ("Even when agricultural yields did increase, villagers found themselves with a maize surplus for which they had neither a market nor storage capacity." W. Easterly January 23, 2014)
- BDaily 2014 (Poor storage puts a damper on maize farmers’ cash prospects, Business Daily - Corporate News, Africa) January 20, 2014.
- GCAP (Ghana Commercial Agriculture Project Appraisal, MoFA) Page 56, starting #61 and Page 130 Bullet 6 and 12-C. #35
- Growing Africa 2013 (Unlocking the Potential of Agribusiness) Page 92 Innovative ways of providing collateral, World Bank, January 2013.
- Metal storage used properly also mitigates Aflatoxins, a poison produced by a mold that is known to cause liver cancer and compromise immune functions in animals and humans.
- WFP 2013 ("Tackling post-harvest loss in developing countries is not rocket science" E. Cousin Executive Director WFP)
- World Bank 2013 (Missing Food: The Case of Postharvest loss in Sub-Saharan Africa - World Bank) Page 34, text box 3.5
Know also
- 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".]
- Ghanian for Field bins.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-harvest_losses_(grains)
http://postharvestinstitute.illinois.edu/why-phl.html