Purdue University
researchers will lead a US$5 million, five-year effort to help countries
in sub-Saharan Africa reduce hunger and poverty fueled by food waste.
By improving processing and marketing of key
crops, those in developing countries can make better use of food that
already is being produced but is simply lost through poor storage or
processing technologies and management practices.
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Production for local markets is a safeguard against hunger: sorghum harvest in Ethiopia.Picture - courtesy Development and Cooperation, Germany
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The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food
Processing and Post-Harvest Handling was announced by United States
Agency for International Development administrator Rajiv Shah at the Chicago Council's Global Food Security
Symposium in May 2014. It is funded by Feed the Future, the US government's Global
Hunger and Food Security Initiative led by USAID.
"This award from Feed the Future will enable
Purdue to help smallholder farmers make available not only more food in a
region of the world where it is greatly needed but also more nutritious
food," said university President Mitch Daniels.
Nine researchers from Purdue's College of
Agriculture and 11 from other universities in the United States and
Africa will conduct research that will support and strengthen crops'
"value chain," the process by which crops go from farm to market to
fork.
Objectives of the research are to:
- Improve drying and storage of cereal grains (corn, rice, sorghum and millet) and grain legumes (cowpea, soybean and peanut) in the humid tropics of Africa, specifically Kenya and Senegal
- Increase commercialization of crops and improve nutrition
- Strengthen institutional and human capacities along the value chain, with emphasis on gender-sensitive approaches as most postharvest activities in sub-Saharan Africa are performed by women
- Establish and strengthen public-private partnerships to promote and adopt innovations in technology to reduce postharvest food loss
Experts say food production will need to double
by 2050, when the world's population is expected to increase to 9
billion people from 7 billion today. While current efforts mainly
involve increasing production to meet the growing demand, this Feed the
Future Innovation Lab focuses on reducing food losses along the value
chain, said Betty Bugusu, project director and managing director of the International Food Technology Center at Purdue.
The Food and Agriculture Organization
of the United Nations estimates such losses at one-third of all food
produced worldwide, with losses prevalent in developing countries.
Read more HERE.
The Global Miller
This blog is maintained by The Global Miller staff and is supported by the magazine GFMT which is published by Perendale Publishers Limited.
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