Abstract
There are many challenges facing small scale farmers especially in Africa and other developing countries that lead to grains post-harvest losses. Amongst these are inadequate storage facilities, rodents, insects and birds. It was predicted that the world’s population will increase to about 9.1 billion people by the year 2050 and most of this increase will occur in developing countries. Hence, the need of investing much to the agricultural sector is necessary in order to produce more food to feed the world. Furthermore, increasing agricultural productivity must go hand-in-hand with improved storage in order to reduce post-harvest losses. Promoting small scale agriculture is the key to achieving food security in developing countries. In this work, metal silo technology for small and medium scale farming was developed for more comfortable and effective grains protection. Air-tightness of the silo was achieved by adding rubber stopper under grains-inlet and discharge lids. Locking points on grains inlet and discharge covers with padlock was designed. Larger size of this silo was modernized to be mobile facilitated with wheels-metal-frame stand for easy repositioning, which replaced the ordinary method of concrete stands and pallets. Cheaper methods of grains moisture control, cleaning and safe emptying of the silo were also provided. Metal silo can be fabricated as cylindrical, square or rectangular prism in shape, also in different sizes of 50 to 3,000 kg holding capacity of grain such as rice, maize, wheat, guinea-corn, millet and beans. Key words: Metal silo, small scale farming, food security, post-harvest losses, developing countries, Africa.
Highlights
The challenges faced by small and medium scale farmers in Africa and other developing countries includes lack of good seedlings, lack of fertilizers, inadequate storage facilities, animals and insect pest
We looked at the grains storage problems and developed the metal silo technology for effective grains protection and postharvest losses reduction
This paper presents a new dynamic model design of mobile metal silo with complete air-tight and padlocking abilities for small and medium scale farmers
Summary
The challenges faced by small and medium scale farmers in Africa and other developing countries includes lack of good seedlings, lack of fertilizers, inadequate storage facilities, animals and insect pest. Agriculture has been estimated for up to 60% of gross domestic product in some Sub-Sahara African countries, employs 70 to 90% of the population, 60 to 70% of consumption expenditure and 10 to 50% of foreign exchange earnings. The developing countries representing over 80% of the world’s population is estimated to have about 500 million small farms, supporting around two billion people. Three out of every four poor people live in rural areas and most depend on agriculture for their daily livelihoods (Sonnino, 2010). Global population is expected to increase from current 6.8 billion to about 9.1 billion people by the year 2050, and most of this increase will occur in developing countries (WPP, 2008)
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