2023_PS_AGFS-03

2023 Seed Grant Award Problem Statements

Agriculture and Food Security

Problem #3: Improving Household Income and Food Security for Female Smallholder Farmers through Increased Access to and Adoption of Hermetic Storage Technologies

Country/Region of execution:  Zambia

Collaborating Organization:  Catholic Relief Services (CRS)

As an international development and relief agency, CRS has been working to serve the world's most vulnerable for more than 75 years. Since 2000, CRS has supported smallholder farmers in Zambia at every level of the value chain to support market linkages and improve agricultural productivity, household income, and food security. In the past seven years alone, CRS Zambia has partnered with government actors, international and US-based research institutions, and value-chain actors to build market linkages and out-grower schemes, scale drought-resistant seeds, and strengthen farmers' skills in marketing, microfinance and savings, innovation, and conservation. Earlier this year, CRS supported a comprehensive value chain analysis of postharvest handling and technologies led by the WFP. By partnering with Purdue Improved Crop Storage (PICS), CRS Zambia seeks to build on these findings and past learnings to improve postharvest management practices and access to hermetic storage technologies for male and female smallholder farmers.

Problem Statement Description:  The value chain analysis (WFP, 2022) found that postharvest losses in Zambia affect more than 50% of smallholder farmers (SHFs), resulting in more than $25.6 million worth of lost maize annually due to poor on-farm storage alone. SHFs in Zambia contributed more than 70% of the nation’s grain supply in 2020-2021, despite an estimated 10-15% of postharvest losses, negatively impacting livelihoods and food security. Adoption of hermetic storage technologies (HSTs) offers a way to significantly reduce losses. However, overall adoption of HSTs has remained low, one reason being that interventions have failed to integrate gender.

Most SHFs in Zambia sell immediately after harvest or store grain in unprotected buildings or ordinary bags, applying insecticides every three months and failing to protect from mycotoxin or aflatoxin contamination. HSTS like metal silos or bags could help, but one analysis found that metal siloes decisively benefit male farmers, who produce greater surpluses because of greater access to land (SDC, 2015). This has also caused a shift in ownership structures of grain storage from being traditionally female to male, further disadvantaging female farmers. PICS bags could be more feasible due to size, cost, and transportability; plus, they are particularly effective for maize, soya, and cowpeas. However, procurement of traditional storage bags is done by men, a practice likely to transfer to PICS bags. This suggests barriers to access for female SHFs for HSTs and could have compounded consequences for female-headed households, who earn less on average than their male counterparts and are the poorest among poor households.
 
While working with SHFs to curtail postharvest losses through improved access and adoption of HSTs is critical, ensuring equitable access for female SHFs is paramount for sustainable economic development and food security. The CRS-PICS intervention will leverage producer and distribution networks to reach 8,000 SHFs and 140 agro-dealers to improve access and uptake from 2023-2026. Unfortunately, the most recent analysis does not expand on the role of women in the value chain for HSTs; thus, a greater gender lens is needed to understand how interventions can be more gender-inclusive. Improving agricultural productivity, household income, and food security by reducing postharvest losses among SHFs, particularly female farmers, furthers SDGs 1, 2, 5, and 9, as well as SDG Target 12.3 which aims to halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and to reduce food loss along value chains (including postharvest losses) by 2030.