Cost Assessment of Five Different Maize Grain Handling Techniques to Reduce Postharvest Losses from Insect Contamination

Abstract

Farmers in developing nations encounter high postharvest losses mainly attributable to the lack of modern techniques for threshing, cleaning, grading, and grain storage. Mechanized handling of grain in developing countries is rare, although the technology is effective against insects and pest infestations. The objective was to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of five grain handling techniques that have the ability to reduce postharvest losses from insect infestation. The five methods were metal silo plus all accessories (m. silo + acc.), metal silo only (m. silo), woven polypropylene plus phosphine (w. PP. + Phos.), woven polypropylene only (w. PP.), and Purdue Improved Crop Storage bags only (PICS). The functional unit used was handling 1 kg of maize grain. The cost analysis of each technique was calculated based on equations using a spreadsheet. The annual capital and operational costs of handling using m. silo + acc. or m. silo were very high, unlike the PICS, w. PP. + Phos., or w. PP. The annual capital and operational costs decreased as production scale increased. Food security (due to reduced insects and pest infestations) and financial prospects of farmers can improve when the grain is mechanically handled with m. silo + acc. or m. silo.

A scoping review of interventions for crop postharvest loss reduction in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia

“…A small body of literature exists on this, although much of it is focused on the adoption of relatively expensive interventions 43,[56][57][58][59][60] . Cost, access, ease of use and reuse, cultural acceptability, one-time subsidies, willingness to pay, scale, awareness and demonstrations, and training are just some of the factors influencing the uptake of PHL reduction interventions along with technical efficacy 11,46,[61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73] .…”

Estimating Environmental and Economic Impacts of Hermetic Bag Storage Technology

“…Current practice of farmers to protect grains from insects is the application of chemical insecticides before placement in conventional (PP) bags for storage. Insecticides are readily available but are an additional expense [2,15,58]. Additionally, when farmers used insecticide, it did not stop insect damage but continued to cause weight loss of 2.5 to 12.9% compared to 1.2 to 1.5% for hermetic bags during 100 to 200 days of maize storage [5,16].…”

Antifungal activity of peracetic acid against toxigenic fungal contaminants of maize and barley at the postharvest stage

“…Maize and barley are the raw materials used to produce various products for human and animal consumption. However, grain loss in the post-harvest stage is relatively high (Abass et al, 2014;Darfour & Rosentrater, 2020). In the coming years, demand for grains is expected to increase due to the increase in the world population (OECD-FAO, 2020), and climate change is likely to affect the production and yields of grain crops (Singano, Mvumi, & Stathers, 2019;Yu, Luo, Wang, & Feil, 2020).…”