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Editorial: small-scale food processing
01.10.2014
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Events
01.06.2014
Food-related meetings and conferences occurring between July and November 2014 -
Reviews
01.06.2014
Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat Philip Lymbery with Isabel Oakeshott 2014, Bloomsbury, 426 pages, paperback, ISBN 9781408846421, £12.99; ebook £10.99Food System Failure: The Global Food Crisis and the Future of Agriculture Christopher Rosin, Paul Stock, and Hugh Campbell (eds) 2012, Earthscan from Routledge, 256 pages, paperback, ISBN 9781849712293, £23.31 -
Conference report: Insects to Feed the World
01.06.2014
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Processing and quality attributes of gowe: a malted and fermented cereal-based beverage from Benin
01.06.2014
Gowe is a sweetish paste of malted, fermented, and cooked sorghum and/or maize flour, consumed in its pure state, but preferentially as a beverage after homogenizing with water, sugar, milk, and ice. A survey was carried out at different localities in the traditional gowe producing areas to investigate the diversity of the processing techniques, consumers’ characteristics, and the quality attributes. Producers and sellers were women exclusively while consumers cut across all classes of age, socio-cultural groups, and educational levels. Gowe varied in cereal and processing techniques, with maize and sorghum being used either singly or in combination (maize/sorghum ratio varying from 1 to 3) through four processes. Apart from the alternative process which leaves out the malting step, gowe processing techniques aim at producing sweetish and acidic tasting products through malting, saccharification, and fermentation. A principal component analysis plot of quality criteria of gowe indicated that the preference of consumers was directly associated with the perceptions of producers. -
Impact measurement for companies sourcing from smallholder farmers in their value chains
01.06.2014
Just as no company would launch a new product or make a major investment without considering how to assess its effectiveness, no company should consider working with smallholder farmers without considering how to measure and monitor the financial and social performance of this activity. Most companies working with smallholder farmers do gather some information, but this information often lacks a clear focus. While these stories can help personalize the impact of a strategy, they are not sufficient to improve a company's performance or communicate to discerning external stakeholders. To demonstrate true poverty impact and returns on resources committed, companies need to measure their activities in a systematic way. Facing this gap, a number of companies have experimented with their own approaches to assessing poverty impact, and organizations have proposed a variety of different measurement and monitoring frameworks specifically designed with companies in mind. This paper gives an overview of the business value that can be created from measuring poverty impact in an agricultural value chain initiative and points to some tools, indicators, and lessons learned for how companies can go about maximizing the business and social impact of their work with smallholder farmers. -
The future of smallholders in Latin America: land, food, livelihoods, and the growth of monoculture
01.06.2014
Greater investment in agriculture is needed to reduce rural poverty and improve food security; but how investment is made, its context and conditions, is at least as important as how much is invested. This paper presents three case studies of large-scale agricultural investment in Paraguay, Guatemala, and Colombia and shows how monoculture expansion is displacing communities, undermining smallholder livelihoods, and worsening local food security. In some cases displacement is a direct result, when companies acquire land from smallholders. In others it is indirect, when smallholders next to plantations are unable to coexist with the health and environmental problems caused by the intensive use of agrochemicals. Cases also showed how large-scale monoculture expansion is competing for land with small-scale basic food production; thus, households which used to be self-sufficient in food now rely on local markets. Even when companies claim to operate responsibly, their business model determines who bears the risks, who has access to capital, and where market power lies. Responsibility should mean benefits and costs are fairly distributed and all rights upheld, including land rights. Private agricultural investment is needed, but it should complement rather than undermine smallholders, who are the main investors in agriculture. -
Nutrient composition of insects and their potential application in food and feed in Europe
01.06.2014
With the increasing demand for alternative protein sources for food and feed due to a growing global population and changing food habits, insects and insect proteins have attracted attention in Europe as a hitherto unexploited alternative animal protein source for food and feed. The nutrient compositions, amino acid spectra, and mineral compositions of the three exemplary insect species Acheta domesticus (adult house crickets), Tenebrio molitor (mealworm larvae), and Hermetia illucens (black soldier fly larvae) are compared with the two conventional feed components soy bean meal and fish meal as well as with the human amino acid requirement, and the potential and suitability of edible insects as food and feed is discussed.