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Traditional crop storage systems deserve greater attention
2006-05-31 07:28:28
By Editor
Over the past year, acute food shortages became almost a national routine song. Prolonged drought was to blame. The impact is already heavily bearing on inflation, with the probability of rebounding to the frightening two-digit figure.
Fortunately, Mother Nature has been too good for us. Let alone the isolated incidences of floods and infrastructure destruction, rainfall had been more than adequate.
There are all signs of bumper crop harvests from all regions. However, it seems the vicious cycle of poverty will regain its latency. The nation is not adequately prepared to store, process and distribute or market the resulting food harvests.
In many regions, crop production is seasonal, yet household food security depends on a regular and sustainable supply of food throughout the year. Thus an adequate crop and food system is needed, together with efficient processing and distribution of foods, to ensure equitable and adequate supplies at the national, district and household levels.
In general, potentially effective improved post-harvest technologies for grains and tubers are known. The challenge is how to adapt the new technologies to specific environments and ensuring that they are economically and socially viable.
Households make choices on how much to store and how much to sell depending on the market prices, their own consumption needs, storage facilities and their needs for immediate cash.
If the local distribution and marketing system is efficient, they can rely on food being available for purchase all the year round, but if they are isolated for at least part of the year through bad roads and lack of transport, their food security will be more at risk and home storage is likely to receive higher priority.
Hence, it is illogical to hear authorities prohibiting farmers from neither selling nor consuming green maize. Trading at this level of maize production complements food security, given the current weaknesses in storage systems.
In Tanzania, an estimated 40 percent of all food produced is never consumed by humans. Instead it spoils or is eaten by insects, rats and other pests. Measures to correct this situation can be taken in fields, households, shops and warehouses.
At the household level, protective measures against monkeys, baboons, porcupines, wild pigs and other destructive animals, even elephants, have proved quite effective.
The reduction of post-harvest losses in cereals and tubers at the village level in Cameroon has typically shown wonderful successes.
Storage must be seen as part of the post-harvest continuum, a link in the production-storage-marketing-consumption chain. It can also overcome what is essentially seen as a transport constraint.
For instance, if early processing is not possible, fresh, undamaged cassava roots may be stored for a short time by burying them in moist dust or sand.
In most parts of the tropics, sweet potatoes are harvested as required. Like other tuber crops, sweet potatoes exhibit a period of dormancy, which enables them to be stored for short periods. The storage life of many varieties can be greatly increased by curing.
There is a tendency to view the preservation and storage of harvested foodstuffs as the duty of women. In fact, they constitute complementary tasks for both sexes in the household.
While women are basically responsible for processing most foods for storage, especially vegetables, men should be responsible for the tasks of constructing special storage structures for most of the staple crops.
An effective food processing, distribution and marketing system will require an appropriate and well-maintained infrastructure, including markets, road networks and extension services to advise farmers on improved storage techniques or on how to bulk their produce as a group to reduce marketing costs.
This requires interventions by both government and the private sector, which could work hand in hand in the establishment of marketing information systems and training in marketing management, accounting and business methods.
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