ACCORDING to a recent publication on the World Food Programme (WFP) website, one-third of food produced for human consumption is either lost or wasted globally, amounting to a financial loss of US$1 trillion annually.
Food waste generally refers to produce thrown away by the consumer, whereas food loss usually happens at production, post-harvest and processing stages of the food chain.
It is for this reason that it has, therefore, become critical that arable land is used as efficiently as possible, through reduced loss and waste.
Liato Kashweka is Development Aid from People to People (DAPP) project monitoring and evaluation officer in Katete. He explains that DAPP, with support from WFP and Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), is implementing the integrated nutrition and smallholder support project in parts of Eastern and Southern provinces.
Mr Kashweka notes that the approach is, however, holistic.
“So, for us, we know that what we want to achieve at the end of the day is for everyone to produce and consume nutritious foods through an integrated and multi-sectoral approach,” he says.
Instead of just promoting the production and consumption of nutritious foods or discourage people from wasting or losing food, the project, in its holistic approach, is taking a bottom-up approach.
Take for instance Damiano Tembo. He is not only a lead farmer, he is also Yooyani Zone 8 agriculture camp rain gauge minder, trained through the project.
His job is to check readings from the rain gauge whenever it rains. The idea is for farmers in the agriculture camp to avoid food loss that may be caused by a shortage of rainfall amid these prevailing climatic threats.
He says: “…20mm [millimetres] of rainfall is sufficient for someone to start planting.”
Every reading he takes from the rain gauge, which was installed in the centre of the agriculture camp in June last year, is recorded and sent to DAPP and Zambia Meteorological Department, and also communicated to other lead farmers.
In turn, the lead farmers share the rainfall readings with all the farmers in the community. The information is vital to farmers as it enables them to determine whether the rains are adequate to plant the crop or not.
“What we don’t want is to have crops die because someone planted early or late. That is why every lead farmer who receives the readings has to communicate the message to farmers under them,” he says.
That is not all.
In a quest to maximise on production, the farmers have also been taught about conservation farming.
Agriculture extension officer Ndogime Zulu says the soil in the area is not very good and that is why she encourages farmers to venture into conservation farming, whose benefits, she says, are many.
“That’s why we have come in with the agroforestry technologies such as planting of tree species such as Gliricidia and Musangu which increase soil fertility and supplement and control water levels in the soil,” she says.
In dry spells, the tree species are able to supply water to any plant that is planted in between them.
“When you trim off the branches and leaves, that mulch will keep the moisture for the plants. This is what we recommend mostly for ripping, a type of conservation agriculture,” says Ms Zulu.
Her catchment in the zone is over a thousand farmers, with 28 cooperatives and 16 clubs.
“We have also introduced crop rotation and also inter-cropping. Rotating maize with legumes has been proven to retain 30 percent of nutrients in the soil,” she says.
She is confident that once everyone has grasped and accepted conservation farming, amid threatening climate change effects, the people in her zone will stand to reap even more benefits.
“We want to see how we can incorporate the use of composite as a locally made fertiliser,” she says.
Mr Kashweka adds: “We started by identifying smallholder farmers in the camps who depended on their small pieces of land for farming. We wanted to ensure that on that small piece of land, they can practise conservation farming and earn even more.”
And the improvement has been massive.
“You can ask any of these farmers here, they will tell you that before we came in, they would harvest between 40 and 50 bags of maize on one hectare. But now that number has almost tripled – that’s massive progress, if you ask me,” he says.
Not forgetting that most food is wasted and lost between production and post-production, the project is also equipping the farmers with knowledge on how to store their home-grown foods.
“We have also been taught about post-harvest loss and how to manage it. Now we even know the period to store whatever we produce and how much will be needed for consumption and the excess that we can sell,” another farmer says.
Mr Kashweka says previously, farmers in the area used unconventional and, sometimes, unsafe methods to store their produce.
“That’s how we came in with the Purdue Improved Crop Storage (PICS) bags. The other thing is about knowing when and how to harvest the maize and all other produce – the idea is to minimise on loss and wastage,” he says.
PICS bags are effective in preserving grain quality for at least 14 different crops. The technology has been directly demonstrated to more than five million farmers in 56,000 villages in Africa.
The bags were designed by the University of Perdue to provide a low-cost method of reducing post-harvest losses. They are a cost-effective, triple-layer hermetic storage bags which permit farmers to store their grains without the use of insecticides, thus providing them healthy, clean food that can be stored for longer.
“The food consumption ratio has also been an issue. We then brought them (farmers) to a realisation of planning how to feed their families, how to store their food during these most critical times. We also bring them to what food to grow. In the past they never used to grow these nutritious foods and crops.
“Now they either intercrop or diversify. We are talking about cash crops such as cassava, soya beans, and orange sweet potatoes. These foods are not just nutritious, they are also marketable, and some farmers can sell some of it to afford to buy things like salt and sugar,” says Mr Kashweka.
Mr Stephen Omula is WFP programme policy officer – smallholder support. He notes that in Zambia, post-harvest losses remain a challenge, with crop losses reaching as high as 30 percent of the total harvests.
“With that in mind, WFP partnered with the Government and cooperating partners to strengthen the capacities of smallholder farmers to reduce losses resulting from poor post-harvest handling and storage practices. This is done through trainings in post-harvest management practices and promoting the utilisation of improved, low-cost crop storage solutions like hermetic bags and silos,” he says.
Mr Omula explains that in 2021 alone, WFP, in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture and cooperating partners, reached about 201,438 smallholder farmers with the trainings, while over 100,000 farmers received hermetic bags to safely store their crops after harvests. Farmers can reuse the bags for more than three harvest seasons.
As part of sustainability, WFP, working with the private sector, has supported the setting up of the last mile distribution network to facilitate smallholder farmers’ easy access of the hermetic bags.
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