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• (Article) Technological innovation in the value chain: A case study of soybean processing for food and wealth

  01.11.2011
  Small-scale food production and processing are the major sources of livelihoods for many rural communities in the developing world, yet the contribution of this sector to economic development of many countries has been ignored. A soybean for food and wealth project was used to demonstrate how the effective harnessing of different disciplines can lead to alleviation of poverty and improved nutritional status in rural communities. This was done by identifying the production and processing constraints of these communities and linking them to research and innovation centres. Their production, processing, and managerial capacities were enhanced through group formation activities, farm and field demonstrations, and facilitation of access to markets. The project demonstrates how food production, processing, and marketing can be improved through linkages between farmers/small-scale enterprises and technology centres. It highlights the need for a synergistic approach to reducing poverty and improving the wealth and health of rural communities.

• (Article) Facilitating the dairy market system in Nepal: A participatory approach

  01.11.2011
  This paper presents the experiences of Practical Action's use of Participatory Market Mapping Workshops (PMMWs) to facilitate a process that allows marginalized dairy farmers in Nepal to gain access to more functional markets, sell their milk, increase their incomes, and help create a more favourable business environment. It illustrates how these achievements have resulted from Practical Action working as a facilitator with market actors to build common and shared understanding of the market system and nurture increased levels of confidence, trust, and influence. Using a visual representation of the market system — the Market Map — facilitators in the field use PMMWs to bring public and private market actors together to identify and discuss blockages and opportunities for increased coordination and collaboration. For the participatory market mapping process to unlock the resources and creativity of public and private market actors, several conditions must be met. This paper gathers and analyses experiences, challenges, tips, and insights from PMMWs conducted in the dairy sector in Nepal, accompanied by an explanation of the principles on which Practical Action's approach is based: systemic thinking, participation, and facilitation.

• (Article) Low-cost disinfestation of food grains

  01.05.2011
  

• (Article) Fairtrade, fair-trade, fair trade and ethical trade: semantics, politics and development

  01.05.2011
  

• (Article) Promoting holistic food systems to stimulate local food economies in marginalized communities

  01.05.2011
  Holistic strategies can provide economic and social benefits to disadvan taged communities, through local food movements such as food sovereignty. This paper examines concrete methods to increase economic opportunities for farmers and to better livelihoods for producers that also increase food security for the community at large. The focus is on recent trends that support food sheds, target marginalized populations, and stimulate the local economy through participatory community efforts in the promotion of local food sources. Case studies draw upon new developments in the rural USA, particularly in the poorest communities of New Mexico. They demonstrate how economic betterment for farmers, positive development of value chains and infrastructure improvements that increase local trade also have the potential to foster healthier communities. Findings that are applicable to developing economies highlight the value of pursuing strategies for community-based, small-scale, integrated food systems.

• (Article) Quality-oriented fresh vegetable supply chain: A pilot in Ahmedabad, India

  01.05.2011
  A pilot vegetable retail store named ‘Clean-n-Fresh’ was designed and operated at the campus of Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad. The aim was to deliver fresh produce of a better (and specified) quality preferred by the consumers. The consumers in the area were people with middle and higher income levels who indicated willingness to pay a premium of up to 20 per cent for clean and fresh produce. The processes and equipment for sorting, cleaning, washing, trimming etc. were specially developed for economy of water, electricity and space. Analysis of over a year of operational data showed that the extra costs incurred for vegetable treatment were about Rs. 1.5-2/kg (US$0.03-0.04/kg), which were within the selling price limit stipulated by consumers. The store began to break even after about six months of operation. This paper describes details of the engineering and business design and a summary of one year of operation.

• (Article) Lacto fermented vegetables and their potential in the developing world

  01.05.2011
  Lacto fermentation is an ancient method of food preservation that, with greater control over the process, has great potential as a low-cost, low-energy and culturally acceptable method of improving food security and nutrition in developing countries. It prevents the growth of most food-borne pathogens and obviates the need for pasteurization or the addition of preservatives. In some cases lacto fermentation can also reduce or remove naturally occurring toxins and anti-nutritional compounds in certain raw fruits and vegetables.

• (Article) Sourcing strategies in the Italian coffee industry

  01.05.2011
  While the socio-economics of the coffee industry has received much attention, this article presents a novel analysis of B2B relationships in order to understand what determines coffee roasters' sourcing strategies. The theoretical framework is based on new institutional economics and relational contracting. The methodology is qualitative and uses a multiple-case approach. The evidence shows that different modes of transactions are devised in order to cope with the business uncertainty and to guarantee supplies of the coffee with the desired quality attributes. Traders offer to roasters guarantees that growers and exporters cannot provide. Relational components in transactions are essential to reduce uncertainty and transaction costs, and are important coordination mechanisms in trader-roaster linkages and even more so in the exporter-roaster interface. Roasters devise stronger coordination mechanisms with suppliers when the quality reputation of the core product is critical in their business strategy.

• (Article) Food chains and the reasons behind rising food prices

  01.05.2011
  This article addresses the food crisis and its impacts on food chains. There are nine general causes of higher prices: use of grains and agricultural land for biofuels; population growth effects; strong income increase and distribution in emerging economies; urbanization of populations (mega-cities); local government income support programmes; high oil prices; production shortages; dollar devaluation; and investment funds speculation. To face this problem, 10 food chain solutions are proposed: sustainable horizontal expansion in food production using new available areas; vertical expansion increasing productivity; reduction in food taxes; investment in global logistics to reduce waste; use of the best sources for biofuels production; reduction in transaction costs; new generation of cheaper and innovative sources of fertilizers; sustainable supply contracts to farmers for more balanced margins allocation; spreading innovations (GMOs, nanotechnology); and, finally, consumer behaviour changes. The article ends by proposing a 14-point agenda for food chains in the future.

• (Article) Changing a dysfunctional food system: Towards ecological food provision in the framework of food sovereignty

  01.05.2011
  The dysfunctional food system that results in a billion hungry people and more than a billion obese people needs fundamental change. This includes a different governance structure and a model of production and consumption that at its centre has the provision of healthy food, produced sustainably and as locally as possible. The paper describes options, including governance by the reformed Committee on World Food Security, that include the implementation of the findings of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development and the call for ecological food provision in the framework of food sovereignty, as called for by social movements including Vía Campesina.

• (Article) Support for small-scale food processors in developing countries in a changing global food supply

  01.05.2011
  Changes in world food supplies over the last 30 years are having a profound effect on small-scale processors in developing countries, marginalizing some and providing new opportunities for others. This paper examines the trends that are taking place, opportunities for small-scale food processors and the constraints that restrict their development. The paper recommends improvements to support provided by educational and research institutes in developing countries and the establishment of a new supply service to overcome constraints in the supply of specialist equipment, packaging materials and ingredients.

• (Article) Nuggets from an old book: A Practical Handbook of Water Supply by F. Dixey (1931)

  01.01.2017
  Frank Dixey’s A Practical Handbook of Water Supply, published in 1931 is briefly reviewed. The text is correlated with current knowledge and experience. It is evident from the book that some of the present challenges in the water supply sector have been around for a long time which leads to the conclusion that effecting a change takes time. Development agencies therefore need to set realistic targets and time frames. Some of the rather old texts should be consulted and reviewed periodically as they may contain very useful information.

• (Article) Can and should sanitation and hygiene programmes be expected to achieve health impacts?

  01.01.2017
  Although the anticipated health benefits are not the only reason for undertaking sanitation and hygiene programmes, they do represent an important part of the justification. Studies and reviews over recent years have shown, however, that the health impacts of sanitation programmes can be quite small or even negligible. They have also provided no solid evidence that integrated (water, sanitation, hygiene) programming has any greater effect than addressing one or two of these components alone. Two questions arise: first, whether a certain level of sanitation usage and hygiene practice within a community is needed in order to achieve a measurable health impact (i.e. whether a minimum percentage of the population should be using safe sanitation); second, whether sanitation and hygiene interventions undertaken without accompanying water supply improvements are likely to have significant health benefits. In this opinion paper some plausible and practically relevant answers to these questions are extracted from the relevant literature. The conclusions are that a high level of sanitation usage (well over 65 per cent) and widespread handwashing practice are necessary to achieve significant health impact; and that in situations where water services are poor, sanitation and hygiene interventions, while valuable for other reasons, are unlikely to have significant health impacts. Sanitation and hygiene programmes may be justifiable even if they do not immediately achieve high levels of compliance and corresponding water supply improvements are not made; however, the justification should not be presented on the grounds of short-term health benefits.

• (Article) Chlorination of drinking water in emergencies: a review of knowledge to develop recommendations for implementation and research needed

  01.01.2017
  Clean water provision is a critical component of emergency response, and chlorination is widely used in emergencies to treat water. To provide responders with practical, evidence-based recommendations for implementing chlorination programmes and recommend areas for future research, we conducted a literature review of chlorination in emergencies, supplemented with a literature review on chlorination in general. We identified 106 total documents, including 7 with information on technical efficacy, 26 on chlorine dosage, 22 on technical challenges, 21 on product options, 8 on user acceptability, 33 on programmes for emergencies, and 8 on monitoring. We found that: 1) international chlorine dosage recommendations in emergencies are highly inconsistent; 2) high-quality information from the general chlorination literature on challenges of chlorination can be adapted for emergencies; 3) many chlorine products are available for use in point-of-delivery, point-of-source, and point-of-use emergency-response programmes; 4) information on the effectiveness of different chlorination programmes in emergencies varies, ranging from little data available to high-quality data that can inform programming; 5) information on user acceptability of chlorination in emergencies is lacking; and 6) monitoring data on chlorine programme effectiveness in emergencies are lacking. In this manuscript, we provide a summary of knowledge on chlorination in emergencies, recommendations for programme implementation, and recommendations for future research needed to assist communities and agencies responding to the increasing number of natural disasters and outbreaks worldwide.

• (Article) Urban community-led total sanitation: a potential way forward for co-producing sanitation services

  01.10.2016
  Community-led total sanitation (CLTS) has been proved to be a successful strategy for tackling the challenge of open defecation in poor rural communities across Africa and Asia. This article explores whether a similar approach can be used in peri-urban and urban areas to help co-produce sanitation facilities and services with inputs from communities, duty bearers, and other sanitation stakeholders. It is argued that an urban CLTS approach does not mean a copy and paste of tools and methods which have proved successful in the rural environment but following a set of similar principles. Based on field experiences different steps are suggested that incorporate these principles and respond to the specific urban sanitation problem. This article helps to articulate and better define urban CLTS as well as giving practical guidance for those wanting to use this kind of approach.

• (Article) WASH challenges to girls’ menstrual hygiene management in Metro Manila, Masbate, and South Central Mindanao, Philippines

  01.07.2016
  This paper examines water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) conditions that enable and hinder Philippine schoolgirls to hygienically manage their menstruation. We collected qualitative data from 13 schools in three regions of the Philippines. Schools in both urban (Metro Manila) and rural areas (Masbate and South Central Mindanao) were included to allow for comparison across settings. Unreliable access to water, lack of disposal mechanisms for menstrual materials, unclean facilities, and insufficient number of latrines were identified as the key barriers to effective menstrual management in Masbate and Metro Manila. In South Central Mindanao, there was greater oversight of WASH hardware at schools and hardware was in better condition, which created a more enabling environment for girls to manage menstruation. Creating an enabling WASH environment for girls to manage menstruation requires sustained support and system oversight, combined with knowledge and information.

• (Article) Menstrual hygiene: a ‘silent’ need during disaster recovery

  01.07.2016
  Post-disaster relief and recovery operations seldom focus on women’s priorities regarding menstrual hygiene. There is an increasing awareness to incorporate inclusive, participatory, and gender-sensitive strategies for implementation of response programmes. This article presents empirical findings related to menstrual hygiene management (MHM), demonstrating it is integral to women’s privacy and safety during recovery. Using case studies from India, the 2012 Assam floods and 2013 Cyclone Phailin in Odisha, this article explores menstrual hygiene practices in a post-disaster context. The data were collected through participatory learning and action tools such as focus group discussions, household interviews, priority ranking, and observations. It emerged that menstrual hygiene was overlooked at the household level during recovery; women and adolescent girls faced seclusion and isolation, exacerbating privacy and security concerns post-disasters. Some humanitarian agencies have an ad hoc approach towards MHM, which is limited to distribution of sanitary pads and does not address the socio-cultural practices around MHM. There is a need for strategic planning to address MHM with a gender-sensitive and inclusive approach. This article draws practical and policy inferences from the research for stronger approaches towards initiating behaviour change in MHM, and addressing attitudes and knowledge regarding menstrual hygiene.

• (Article) Making pathogen hazards visible: a new heuristic to improve sanitation investment efficacy

  01.04.2016
  The public health objective of sanitation is to reduce the risk of negative health outcomes from faecal contamination. For water-based sanitation systems at the household and community scale as practised in Indonesia and perhaps elsewhere, the liquid component of the effluent comprises a significant pathogen hazard. While increasing attention is paid to managing the solid fraction, the hazard in the liquid fraction goes largely unnoticed and unmanaged. This paper proposes the means for a conceptual shift to a focus on the pathogen hazards that matter post-treatment, and where those hazards enter the environment, enabling improved local risk management. Firstly, the paper proposes exponential, rather than arithmetic, representations of pathogen number or concentration, because arithmetic representations of treatment efficacy wrongly suggest low cause for concern. Secondly, the paper introduces and applies the Pathogen Hazard Diagram, a new heuristic applicable at both the local and national scale, that requires only local knowledge and general sanitation reference knowledge to construct, but which can guide policy and action, direct monitoring, and improve the efficacy of sanitation investments.

• (Article) Beyond ‘functionality’ of handpump-supplied rural water services in developing countries

  01.01.2016
  Many rural point-water sources in developing countries consist of wells or boreholes equipped with handpumps. Various estimates have been made of the functionality of such water points, and functionality is now routinely monitored in national and local surveys of service performance. We argue, however, that a single binary (functional/non-functional) indicator is crude and insufficient to provide much information about service sustainability. We set out a categorization of functionality which includes three sub-categories of functional water points and five non-functional sub-categories, with well/handpump water points in mind. We use a simple model to demonstrate that reduction of high rates of early post-construction abandonment and reduction of total downtimes would greatly improve service performance. We show that functionality levels for multi-age populations of wells or boreholes equipped with handpumps would not normally be expected to exceed about 85 per cent. We recommend going beyond functionality monitoring via the collection of quantitative data on rates of abandonment, frequency and duration of breakdown, combined with descriptive narratives of actions to manage and repair water points, in order to generate more nuanced understanding of service performance.

• (Article) The role of handpump corrosion in the contamination and failure of rural water supplies

  01.01.2016
  There has been much discussion over many years regarding the origin of elevated iron concentrations in rural water supplies in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. High iron concentrations are often assumed to be naturally occurring in groundwater, despite several studies over the last 30 years which also point to the role of handpump corrosion in aggressive groundwater. Handpump standards specify that galvanized iron pump materials should not be used in groundwater due to the risk of corrosion, yet this advice is not always followed. High iron concentrations, whether naturally occurring, or present as a result of corrosion, have an impact on taste, odour, and appearance of water and can promote the growth of unpleasant iron metabolizing bacteria. These effects often result in the abandonment of boreholes, sometimes only a year old, and a return to unprotected and unsafe water sources. Where boreholes are not abandoned, the effects of corrosion can cause pump materials to degrade to the point where the pump becomes inoperable. These outcomes are clearly inconsistent with the provision of sustainable water supply services as a fundamental human right. This paper provides a synthesis of work undertaken in this area over the last 30 years and recent practical experience of WaterAid in investigating these problems in water supplies in north-eastern Uganda.