CEO and Founder of NeverIdle Farms (Ghana)
William Lanier is CEO and founder of NeverIdle Farms (Ghana). His experience includes Cooperative Extension Integrated Pest Management at Montana State University (USA), a farm in Southern Alberta (Canada), and recently an entrepreneur replacing West African grain postharvest and input loss (PHL) with nutrition. Applying science practically to deliver surplus nutrition is his expertise. Find out more at his LinkedIn.
Currently I organize evaluation of surplus grain PHL prevention, aggregation, storage and processing to overcome a general postharvest lacuna embedded in sub-Saharan African (SSA) development and input agribusiness. Read more here.
For example, Ethiopian MoA is considering carbon emission intensity as a means to compare surplus storage systems. Comparing how storage reduces PHL establishes the marginal rate-of-abatement needed to calculate the fair price of lease or purchase. Fair price would indicate what solution(s) matches which target area(s) natural advantage enabling accessible nutrition, environmentalism, and foreign exchange.
The greatest opportunity for SSA Agriculture is to replace PHL with nutrition. For example, reducing the losses that occur in the postharvest chain for cereals offers a resource efficient means of increasing food availability without further use of land, water or emission related to agricultural inputs. You can find out more at The African Postharvest Losses Information System (APHLIS).
According to the FAO, 95% agricultural research investments in SSA over the last three decades have been directed to increasing production, with only 5% aimed at reducing crop loss.
SSA agribusiness sees little profit in the preservation of grain once it is produced. In fact, SSA input agribusiness actually profits from grain loss in storage as this loss reduces the food supply thus creating a false perception that subsidized input and research is needed to produce more grain.
It is important to discuss how mobile vented and metal grain storage is an IPM platform that enables biological control of stored grain PHL related to insects. Historically monitoring the results of drying, diatomaceous earth, dusting, fumigation and resistance mitigating biological control practices like natural or introduced enemies is hampered by stacks of sack/bag in warehouses.
Airtight/sealed/hermetic containers require disadvantaged growers build/maintain redundant stationary warehouses and thus surplus grain nutrition is sub-optimal per unit emission intensity.
Recently the African Union hosted the 2nd All African Postharvest Conference to focus attention on historical over-emphasis of increased gross production regardless of net nutrition. For grains alone, the value of PHL equals US$4 billion/year, which could meet the annual food requirements of about 48 million people.
The value of food loss exceeds the annual value of grain imports into Africa. PHL exacerbates emissions and soon insecurity through wasting precious land, water, farm inputs used in producing food that is not consumed. Read more here.