Unique center trains Tanzanian farmers to preserve their fruits and veggies
▻http://news.mongabay.com/2015/0414-sri-rcernansky-ptsc-produce-storage-subsaharan-africa.html
With rudimentary means for storing, processing, and transporting crops, farmers and traders throughout sub-Saharan Africa may lose nearly half of their fruits and vegetables between the harvest and the point of consumption or sale, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. A key technology that farmers lack is refrigeration.
The ZECC, which uses evaporation to cool its inner space relative to outside temperatures, offers a low-tech, low-cost version of refrigeration. Keeping the bricks wet is the only real maintenance it requires. Sama said she can keep produce a few days longer in it than she otherwise could. Certain unripe fruits, such as mangoes, keep up to two weeks longer. That makes a big difference, because otherwise she would have just a day or so to eat or sell her greens, and a few days for fruit. She and other farmers who use the ZECCs are happy with them. But the ZECC also showcases some of the challenges of reducing perishable crop losses in rural Africa.
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