Food Processing: ...and working with them.

Day Seven

Sunday, May 24, 2015

The morning was greeted with big smiles from friends.  Omelets fresh bread rolls from the bakery in Konongo, along with coffee and hot chocolate, made for a good breakfast.  Work began for Teams One and Three around 8:15 am at Auntie Akosua’s house.

Everyone learned a ton, including, but definitely not limited to, how and where she stores her cassava: in two forty-gallon barrels filled with water.  The grating team was able to identify and provide preliminary diagnoses of the problems that the grater was having. The machine needed more servicing back at ITTU, however, so they used the new grater to grate nearly all of Auntie Akosua’s stored cassava. This provided a few hours of testing on the new design and also ensured that Auntie Akosua’s stored cassava wouldn’t go bad when she didn’t have a grater for a whole week.

Upon return from church, however, Auntie Akosua asked her sons to begin pressing a bag of the grated cassava using heavy rocks.  We captured this, and lots of other things, on camera, and for good reason – the process is quite strenuous, time consuming, and very dangerous (not to mention inefficient). Everything we had heard about the traditional pressing held true. 

Auntie Akosua watches as her sons press cassava with rocks, next to her ADE press.

The double-lead screw press, on the other hand, was doing very well (despite a couple half-broken parts).  We were able to begin pressing two big bags of grated cassava on the press.

While all of this was happening, the business team was having great success as well.  First, we got a lot of useful information from Kingsford regarding rental income that Auntie Akosua was realizing by sharing use of her press, and names of more leads for potential customers.  Hayley, Peter, Rosy, Asante, and Debbie met with Robert (a tomato farmer from Konongo), Kingsford, and a few other locals who are familiar with the local tomato farming and processing industry.  We grated a bag of tomatoes to see if our grater, in its current form, could be used to create a tomato purée.  We decided, after a long meeting/interview, that there is a huge opportunity to significantly reduce food waste and food insecurity, as well as to significantly increase tomato farmer income and productivity.  However, those grinders already exist in the marketplace.  Though ADE may not devote an entire team to this, we may, as a potential side project, connect these farmers with people who sell tomato grinders and work with REP to help finance and distribute those machines to the right people.

Robert, a tomato farmer, with some the ADE team and three PKK district officers.

After this meeting, Rosy and Peter went with Kingsford and Joe to Kingsford’s half-acre rice farm about three-quarters of a mile from Auntie Akosua’s home.  He told them about the growing process, including the time- and labor-intensive rice thrashing that has to happen post-harvest in order to create a marketable product.  They also were met by two very young children who had carried water from a pump about a half-mile from the farm to industrial-strength pesticide sprayers, which Kingsford said that they operate.  Upon a short discussion, Rosy and Peter agreed that although there is enormous room to improve this entire process, a much larger organization (or collaboration between multiple organizations with a many more resources than ADE) would have to intervene to make a significant and lasting impact.  As much as they would love to improve the conditions at this rice farm, ADE simply does not have the capabilities required.  One project at a time.

Kingsford eating corn on the cob and talking to Peter and Rosy about his rice farm.

Around noon, we headed back to Konongo to meet up with a team that had briefly visited Auntie Howe, our very first user, in another village, Adumkrom. Six months ago, we had given her one of our early press designs, which required the user to tighten a ratchet strap, compressing the bag of grated cassava between two boards. We were hoping to pilot the design with her by learning about her interactions with it over a six-month period. On this visit, however, we learned that she hasn’t used that press at all – it even collected some cobwebs. Apparently, it was difficult for her to figure out how to use – something that we were concerned about – and so she hadn’t touched it. (This semester, the team put significant effort into improving the interaction with the press, and users have found it intuitive to use. We are excited to field more presses from the new design, the double lead screw press.)

We were happy to see that Auntie Howe’s grater, the first one ever deployed, is still functioning well.

We got back to the guest house, had a team meeting over dinner to review the weekend, and talked about plans for the future – both short and long-term.