Farming and Land Use

COMACO and GRAINPRO Inc: A partnership to “store the future”

Conservation farming as practiced by COMACO helps to ensure higher yields without costly inputs to the small scale farmer. For details on conservation farming please go to this link http://www.aec.msu.edu/fs2/cfs/index.htm

However, despite the benefits from this more sustainable way of farming, thousands of COMACO farmers lose much of their harvested crop to pest attacks, particularly weevils. As their crops are transported to COMACO warehouses, here too, crops are under threat of weevil and fungal attack and can threaten the business success of COMACO. For the small-scale farmer who keeps his grain in small granaries that provide little protection to weevils, losses can be over 30% and the cost of chemicals for protection are expensive, typically not available and if administered the wrong way can be a health risk.   COMACO is about simple solutions that are environmentally safe and cost-effective for both COMACO farmers and the COMACO business.

COMACO invests in GRAINPRO products
To address these problems, COMACO has invested in products produced by GRAINPRO Incorporated and seeks to test their usefulness at both the household and company level. GRAINPRO is a “green, not for profit” international organic storage system organization which shares similar values and beliefs with COMACO. GRANIPRO is producing and selling various certified hermetically sealed storage products that suffocate all living organisms within two weeks.  The products come in different size, including cocoons that range from 20 to 250 ton storage capacities to super grain bags for 50kg storage. COMACO has invested in 4 large cocoons, 1medium sized cocoon and 3 X75sqm collapsible solar dryers for drying rice. In addition, 100 super grain bags which can store up to 90 kgs of grain have been received for small scale grain storage.

Workshop on how to use GRAINPRO
GRAINPRO`s Sales Representative from Kenya, Mr. Andrew Waithaka Kiragu traveled to Zambia to conduct a 3 day training session in cocoon setup and management of seeds. The training took place from 29th June to 2nd July 2010.


                    Training participants pose in front of cocoon                                A session during the training

Six (6) stores officers and Regional staff from COMACO attended the training, while 2 other officers, 1 from Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MACO) and the other from Food Reserve Agency (FRA) also attended the training. This training was important for all the parties present as each organization represented faces challenges of food security and storage of grain and seed.

Benefits of GRAINPRO
The three day training provided insight on the use of the cocoons, their ability to hold high volumes of different types of grain, while keeping it tight and free from moisture, pests and oxygen which is conducive for breeding fungi and pests.

The pictures below show some of the processes involved in setting up cocoons and storing of grain.

 
                     50MT cocoon being set up during training                 Mr. Kiragu illustrates how to use oxygen meter
The cocoon was set up, alongside other technologies such as the super grain bags and the 1metric ton Grain Safe Bag.

The pictures below show an illustration of how the bags are meant to be used.

 
                         Shelled groundnuts stored in SGB                        Groundnuts can now be safely stored for a long period
The 1metric ton grain bags are useful to small scale farmers because they store the right quantities of grain for longer periods of time.

COMACO`s plan
COMACO intends to test the 50kg and 1 ton grain bags in 2010 to gauge farmers’ response and their willingness to use some of the profits they make from their commodity sales to invest in this low-cost, grain storage technology and COMACO will facilitate procurement and distribution.  COMACO has opted to invest for its own operations the larger grain storage systems because of the large scale commodity buying which is currently taking place. It is hoped that hundreds of tons of food commodities will be procured this year alone and can now be safely stored without use of chemicals. 

All this will benefit not only COMACO but the small farmer, who sells produce to COMACO, and the consumer, who enjoys the safety of It’s Wild! Products.