Some countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), keen on reducing the number of food-insecure people, have focused their efforts on improving post-harvest management practices to ensure adequate food volumes and the resilience of smallholder farmers in tackling agricultural challenges such as climate change and commodity price volatility.
The number of food insecure people in West Africa and East Africa has increased by 21% and 17%, respectively, over the past year, according to the United Nations World Food Programme.
This trend has triggered concerns among public and private sector food industry players about the slow implementation of sustainable measures to increase food production and embrace better post-harvest management practices.
Across SSA, which has an estimated population of 1.3 billion people and is anticipating its food demand to triple by 2050, post-harvest losses, especially in grains, have been singled out as a major problem that undermines the region’s food security and reduces earnings for smallholder farmers.
SSA’s post-harvest losses are estimated at more than 30% of the total harvest, largely attributed to poor storage infrastructure, inadequate technology and farmers’ limited skills on post-harvest losses. Thus, the governments have committed to end dependence on traditional storage methods such as the use of regular bags and silos whose performance is compromised by pest infestations and spoilage.
According to Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), an African-led partnership working across the continent to support small-scale farmers, “total food losses in sub-Saharan Africa are estimated at $4 billion per year, an amount that can feed 48 million people. These losses represent a dual failure — both economic and ecological — by reducing farmer incomes and food availability while wasting scarce inputs, including water, land and fertilizers.”
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said SSA recorded food losses between harvest and retail at 23% annually, far above the average global score of 13.3%. However, some governments in SSA, in partnership with the private sector, are investing in modern post-harvest management policies and technology to minimize the losses.
Among the measures is investment in the production, distribution and use of hermetic storage technology such as the Purdue Improved Crop Storage or “PICS” bag, developed by Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, US, that is not only sustainable but affordable and accessible to millions of the region’s small-holder grain producers.
The bags are comprised of three disconnected plastic layers. The inner two layers are made up of high-density polyethylene material, 80 microns thick, while the outer third layer is a standard polypropylene woven sac, with all the linings remaining “detached from one another and are individual, separate layers that offer sustained grain safety,” according to the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT).
The multi-layered bag technology “modifies the environment and restricts gas exchange with the outside atmosphere,” according to Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT), which is funded by the African Development Bank to increase the continent’s agricultural productivity through the deployment of proven and high-performance agricultural technologies.
“Under this system, farmers can store grains for up to two years while retaining their palatability and cooking quality,” it said, adding “grain quality is conserved through the regulation of moisture inside the bag and inhibits fungal growth that leads to build-up of carcinogenic mycotoxins.”
“The cooking time of grains preserved in hermetically sealed bags remains the same as freshly dried ones whereas loss of moisture in traditional storage techniques may double the amount of time and energy that is needed for preparing grains as food,” TAAT said.
Obstacles to overcome
Although several SSA countries are scaling up the use of PICS bags, low farmer awareness, unaffordability among many users and reluctance by governments to remove taxes on the technology have impeded widespread progress.
In East Africa, governments such as Tanzania, Zambia, Uganda and Kenya agree there is a need to scale up the use of hermetic storage bags to reduce postharvest losses, but the countries aren’t willing to remove taxes on the product.
For instance, in Tanzania, East Africa’s second largest economy with an annual post-harvest crop loss of approximately 20%, the government has introduced fiscal incentives to encourage wide-scale use and domestic manufacture of hermetic storage technologies such as the removal of taxation on storage materials of agricultural goods, subsidizing of storage materials on agriculture and increasing the country’s grain production.
The Ministry of Agriculture said in its national post-harvest management strategy 2019-29 that the use of sustainable grain storage technologies, especially the hermetic technology, “have been helping much in reduction of post-harvest losses and increase household food security and cash income.”
Approximately 1.3 million tonnes of the country’s average annual maize production of 6.4 million tonnes are lost, costing Tanzania an estimated $275 million, according to the Eastern Africa Grain Council (EAGC).
This loss, EAGC said “is more than twice the size of the entire agriculture sector budget for the 2021-22 fiscal year, and the gravity of such losses undermines efforts to combat hunger, diminishes strategies for generating export revenue, and hampers the overall earnings of farmers.”
EAGC, in partnership with the Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), an African-led partnership working across the continent to help millions of small-scale farmers, is at the forefront of promoting the use of hermetic storage technologies in the East Africa region that includes Tanzania.
Tanzania, and other member countries of the East Africa Community (EAC), a regional intergovernmental organization of eight partner states including Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan and Uganda, have embraced a common hermetic storage bags specification standard, which is EAS 985-1:2020.
EAGC, AGRA and other food industry players in East Africa have teamed up to encourage the uptake of hermetic storage technology and the removal of taxes on the technology, including the manufacturing phase. In one of its studies, EAGC indicated the removal of taxes — especially the value added tax (VAT) — from hermetic bags can generate a total net benefit to grain industry stakeholders of $38.9 million per season.
In Kenya and Uganda, where VAT charges are as high as 18%, prices for hermetic technology remains high, which is the primary reason for the low uptake of the solution by users, including grain producers and retailers.
The EAGC study showed that in both countries a typical hermetic bag retails at approximately $2.50, “which is several times more expensive than conventional bags, hence making the wide-scale adoption of hermetic technologies difficult.”
“VAT is 16% in Kenya and 18% in Uganda, meaning that while uptake has been growing, the tax significantly restricts farmer interest because farmers are highly price-sensitive,” the EAGC study said.
VAT exemption on hermetic storage bags “will in the longer-term result in increased tax revenue from increased volume and value of maize traded since the adoption of hermetic bags is expected to save and put on the market an extra 160,000 tonnes and 64,950 tonnes of maize in Tanzania and Uganda, respectively,” the Council said.
Although the PICS bags constitute the predominant hermetic storage technology used in Tanzania, accounting for over 95% of all hermetic storage product sales, “the prohibitive cost of these bags, retailing at five times the price of conventional polypropylene, poses a significant barrier to adoption by farmers.”
Removal of the VAT, AGRA said, “has dramatic positive impacts on the economy and significantly increases farmers’ income. However, it is important to note that VAT removal is not the only factor that will trigger increased demand for hermetic bags.”
In the case of Uganda, the country’s tax agency, Uganda Revenue Authority, is reportedly charging the 18% VAT on each component of the hermetic bag separately — that is, 18% for each inner liner and outer woven hermetic bag — making the technology unaffordable for the majority of smallholder farmers and retailers. The country’s Ministry of Agriculture recently said only 1% of the smallholder rice farmers use hermetic storage bags compared with 11% who store the grain in traditionally constructed barns.
For sustainability, EAGC said, “East African countries are encouraged to zero-rate VAT on hermetic bags, other hermetic storage technologies, and post-harvest solutions in general.”
In Zambia, one of Africa’s top maize producers, the Ministry of Agriculture indicated farmers report high post-harvest losses ranging from 30% to 40% due to poor storage and handling given limited access to related technology, tools and infrastructure.
New program for farmers
Recently, the ministry, in collaboration with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CYMMIT) and other non-governmental organizations, commenced a program involving working smallholder farmers to increase the use of the hermetic storage technology, especially the PICS bags to enable maize producers to achieve quality and receive higher market prices for their grain.
Post-harvest food losses in SSA are substantial, yet the potential of reducing them is equally huge, especially if measures such as manufacture and use of PICS bags are scaled up with the Malabo Montpellier Panel, which is a team of agriculture and food security experts.
The panel noted: “Farmers would be able to earn more for their crops when the market isn’t flooded, shop owners and market sellers would have more produce to sell, and more food would be available for consumers meaning less reliance on imports.”