Threshing a new future: Quiet agro-tech revolution

NOT all earths hattering things begin with the clarion call of wise men from the East; some creep in stealthily without anyone noticing. Post-harvest loss is one of the leading problems in the country’s agricultural sector.

Whereas in developed economies 40 per cent of losses happen at the retail and consumer stages, in the country, 40 per cent of food is lost at the post-harvest and processing stages. For horticultural crops such as fruits and vegetables, losses are even higher, reaching up to 70 per cent.

The causes are varied, ranging from inadequate and poor storage facilities, weak handling and transport logistics, pests, diseases, rodents and mold, to policy, infrastructure and coordination gaps. The underlying effects are dire, to put it mildly. Food security is jeopardised in a big way.

While the country has not experienced famine in recent years, it has created a large base of consumers for its agricultural products—mostly grains and pulses—living in neighboring countries and overseas. These markets’ demand has never been saturated by Tanzanian produce.

This means that the crops lost could not only have reduced the supply gap but also increased foreign currency earnings for Tanzania and raised farmers’ incomes. In addition, the country’s population – now at 66 million, is among the fastest growing in the world, which means the number of mouths to feed is rising at an exponential rate. Coupled with ever-decreasing farmland, the problem keeps mounting.

It is due to these challenges that the government, through the Ministry of Agriculture, introduced the National Post-Harvest Management Strategy under the Agricultural Sector Development Programme Phase II (ASDP II), with the target of reducing post-harvest losses by 50 per cent.

To address this issue— without underestimating the contribution of awareness creation, the availability of affordable technologies suited to the local environment usually plays the biggest role.

To respond to this need, the Alliance of Bioversity International & CIAT, under the Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance (PABRA-Africa) programme and the Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute (TARI), through their flagship project titled “Scaling Multi-Crop Threshing Machines for Women and Youth Empowerment in Tanzania” (funded by the now-defunct United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT)), sought to address the matter.

The project aimed to improve access to threshing services for women and youth to reduce farm labour, create job opportunities through multi-crop threshing service provision, improve the quality of farm produce and increase incomes.

However, the biggest gap these organisations identified as hindering the full realisation of women’s and youth’s potential in agriculture was the limited entrepreneurial opportunities.

Through this initiative, PABRA and TARI—aware of the effectiveness of technology in reducing post-harvest losses—began to raise awareness about Multi-Crop Thresher (MCT) machines.

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These machines can thresh and clean more than nine crops, namely: Maize, common beans, sorghum, pigeon peas, sunflower, soybeans, finger millet, cowpeas, lablab and green grams. The significance of MCT machines goes beyond reducing post-harvest losses.

They; reduce labour drudgery (especially for women with multiple social responsibilities), improve grain quality and create employment opportunities for women and youth. To ensure affordability, the programme distributed MCT machines to a number of farmers in 10 different regions at a 50 per cent subsidy.

According to reports, women and youth made up 80 per cent of all beneficiaries. However, participants had to meet certain criteria such as official registration, holding a bank account and committing to cover the remaining 50 per cent of the MCT cost.

To ensure proper usage, the handover was preceded by intensive training conducted by the manufacturer—Imara Tech Ltd, a company based in Arusha, Tanzania.

This brings us to a fascinating part of the story: Imara Tech, the “lion of Africa” that rose from grass to grace and shows no sign of slowing down—thanks to the indomitable entrepreneurial spirit of its founder, Mr Alfred Chengula and the visionary partnership with PABRA and TARI.

While a broader conversation about Imara Tech will follow in the coming column, it is prudent to shed some light on this up-and-coming agri-tech titan. Founded in 2016, Imara Tech is a youth-led company that develops agricultural equipment to solve smallholder farmers’ problems. Although it manufactures several products, the MCT is its main innovation.

To date, the company has produced thousands of units, which have been sold to farmers in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

To reach more farmers, the company has opened showrooms in Songwe and Dodoma, a strategy usually associated with foreign companies exhibiting tractors and motor vehicles.

Imara’s ambitious journey has not only impacted thousands of farmers but also created dozens of direct jobs, empowered young and women entrepreneurs and contributed to strengthening food and nutrition security in the country