I wish the picture upload was faster; I could then post a photo of my latest struggle. It takes the form of an oil expeller made in (I think) northeast China that weighs about a ton-and-a-half and is one of the more amazing pieces of cast iron I've yet seen.
Brief aside: For those of you who don't know, one of my favorite hobbies back home is refurbishing / reseasoning / rescuing cast iron pans and giving them to friends. If you've never cooked with cast iron, you've neither eaten or cooked. And if you're using one of those chintzy pans from Wal-Merde, you'll be intimately familiar with the quality of cast with which I'm working.
Anyrow, Thursday, a guy from Mongu who is the expert in wiring the motors and operation of expellers came down to help us wire up the starter motors (essentially a mini-transformer box that does some step-down on the three-phase power line fitted with a "start" and "stop" button). I shoveled a meter-deep trench between the warehouse (where the distribution box is) to the oil shed. Did it myself because we had a cold rain all morning (weird for this time of the year) and the trustee remain huddled on the veranda of the warehouse, warning me against working in the rain.
Brief aside #2: Zambians loathe cold. People start dressing up like its December in Ottawa this time of year; jackets and hoodies (secondhand saluala from the States) and a multitude of gloves / mittens are the rule. People hurry wherever they are going and respond to greetings, not with the usual "I've woken well, and you?", with "Cold!" and hustle along. As far as I can tell, most folks figure you'll catch the flu from cold weather. Now, mix in rain, which is still thought by many to cause malaria if you're exposed to it, and you have a situation in which people won't leave the house. As such, Senanga looked deserted Thursday morning.
Anyway, Mr. Likando wired up the boxes. It took most of the day as we kept having to send our trustee, Mr. Simasiko, into town for supplies (our production site is about a mile and a half from the market). We got the oil mill wired up by 19:30 and fired it up at 19:38 (7:38p). By God and all that's holy, in the pale glow of the fluorescent lights, it turned on and started whirring away. I almost broke taboo to hug Mr. Likando; as it was, I just about shook his hand off his shoulder.
The next day, he offered to stick around and show me how to run the mill as his project had some off-days (he supervises a jatropha-to-diesel fuel project that is struggling along in Mongu). So, starting around 7:30, we started the engine up and slowly fed sunflower into the hopper; you do this for 20~30 minutes to slowly build up the heat in the helical screw. It also gives you the time to do adjustments to the screw and tighten or loosen the rings. The former controls the overall moisture of the cake; you want "dry" cake, i.e., all the oil is squeezed out of it; once you get this, you are pressing well. Otherwise, you have to recycle the wet cake back into the feed hopper mixed in with fresh seeds.
It didn't take long for us to break down as a result of a simple mistake. The engine has three belts that run to a large pulley that rotates the helical screw. However, one pulley is run off of those to a small driveshaft that runs across the top of the machine and turns an agitator in the hopper that stirs the seed and augers it down into the screw. The pulley wheel hadn't been screwed in correctly, so it started turning freely on the driveshaft and the agitator/intake auger consequently stopped. We shut down the engine, disabled the belt, and reset the wheel; however, by the time we got it fixed, the cake had hardened inside the rings and frozen the helical screw in place. As Papa Bear Likando said ruefully, "This is why we don't stop the engine."
It's a 60-80 minute job to break the screw loose; you have to knock all the rings loose with a hammer and chisel, then chisel the cake of the outside of the cake, which has a consistency not unlike a frozen hockey puck. After that's all done, you reset the rings, check the screw and start up again.
The second round went far better; we got the adjustments right, and the machine started to really heat up due to the friction. According to Pappa Bear, this was a good thing, as you drive more oil out of the seeds once it gets good and hot. I mean really hot; we could literally fry eggs on the shield, and you could hear the seeds popping inside the rings. The oil was consequently heated, and our shields aren't adequate enough, so I kept getting hit with burning oil the rest of the day as I shoveled cake away from the outlet. I didn't mind at all; Pappa Bear kept up a running commentary, and by God, I was learning. It's not often enough that I'm getting formally taught by a Zambian (by default, people assume/expect you to have more knowledge / be the teacher / etc.) and he was a fount of knowledge. Also, I spend most of my time running around trying to get things working, and very little time actually seeing them work.
PB and I went back to town, and I bought him lunch before he headed back home to Mongu. We pressed a grand total of twenty liters from about 60kgs of seed; much of it's quite sludgy (unfiltered or unclarified [boiled]) and we had quite a bit of wastage due to a lack of shields, drip trays, filters, etc. I'll design these and manufacture them myself or, more likely, have local artisans bang them out. Plus, we need to build a boiler to clarify the oil (heat it enough to kill off enzymes that give a smell and shorten the shelf-life). Lastly, we need settling tanks, drums, etc. In all, we still have a solid month's work ahead of us before we have food-grade sunflower oil; but believe it or not, we are on the downhill side of the work, as we started from the ground in January.
All for now ... back to the mill.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Getting on the Boat
The timber industry in Senanga is likely one of the lowest-tech, but yet, highest-value sawmills I’ve ever seen. Utilizing the most jerry-rigged, abused WoodMizers I’ve ever seen, they churn out thick planks for the export market. The straw boss, who doesn’t appear to be a local and speaks in functional, forceful Lozi, told me the planks’ destination was likely (guess?) China. Mostly, they are churn out rosewood (Guibourtia coleosperma [L. muzauli] ) planks that take four men to stack; I can’t imagine driving a nail into those planks for the life of me. Once in a while, they buzz up a Zambezi Teak (Baikiaea Plurijuga) or a mukwa (Pterocarpus Angolensis), which make the beauty of the rosewood pale in comparison; the teak swallows light when shined, and the mukwa features a striking contrast between the heart and sapwood that accentuates with age. Unfortunately, the likely reason you see fewer of those logs is that there are fewer of those trees standing; they have been cut commercially since the Brits rolled in one hundred years ago, and the burgeoning urban market and the voracious Chinese market is quickly mopping up what’s left. Also, people tell me the mukwa and teaks are incredibly slow growing; my experience so far tells me that any tree that can’t mature in less than 10 years is on a short timeframe in the endangered species list.
Anyway, behind the sawmill is one of the denser stands of velvet beans in town. Usually, to collect beans, I set off on peregrinations through the townships to collect a small handful of beanpods from of the fences between houses. Along the river, though, there are pure stands of velvet bean. It’s definitely a tradeoff … I collect far more beans, but you have to fight through all manner of verdant, thorny vegetation, all of which seem intended to set off some sort of allergic skin reaction. Mentally gritting my teeth and resisting the urge to scratch the itch (it creates a rather unpleasant negative feedback loop), I fill an old cement bag within a half-hour; the beans are heavy enough to warrant bearing on my shoulder, leaving one arm free to carry home relish for dinner. It being Sunday, I aimed to get my usual ndombe (catfish) to make chowder.
I was approaching the junction leading into the market when I noticed the police trucks and the large gentlemen clad in what I like to call “beating” wear … i.e. bloused pants, dungaree tops, and brown berets, sporting what appear to be Bren guns of WWII vintage. An arm hanging out of a green truck gesticulated in my direction; it was an acquaintance who works for the local prison. I greeted him, and he me, and he gave me some rare direct advice to go straight home, as their might be trouble brewing with the opposition party (PF) cadres in town. Quite a few were doing as cadres like to do, which is drink a lot of beer and act tough, and pummel any members of the opposing party.
Let me rewind a bit; politicking in Zambia is slightly different than the States. Sure, campaigns are getting progressively weirder back home, but you need to come live in Africa (this one I can generalize) to see a much more vivid upcoming.
First off, the way you demonstrate your allegiance to a party is to wear some sort of uniform, badge, clothing, etc. The “ruling” (what they call the majority party running government) party, the Movement for Multiparty Democracy, has the edge on this one; people sport very elaborate chitenge-material clothes bearing the president’s smiling image and the party’s symbol and slogan; for the MMD, it is the “The Hour Has Come” surrounding a clock face indicating one o’ clock), and for the opposition Patriotic Front (PF) it is “Pa Bwato” ([Get on] The Boat) with two gentlemen paddling a traditional dugout. For you Zambian history buffs, the old United National Independence Party has a right hand bearing a torch, ala the old Zairean flag.
The second way to demonstrate your party loyalty is a hand symbol that is waved vigorously at any party function, rally, etc. The MMD uses a gesture that emulates the clock symbol [koloko] by extending their index finger and thumb and rotating the hand rapidly (think like the number #1 sign commonly used at sporting events, but a tad different). PF is a bit simpler; they make a fist and shake it up-and-down, sort of like the Black Panthers (I guess ... not much of that in Upper Michigan).
As Peace Corps Volunteers, we are expressly forbidden from participating in any political events; we are guests of the government and our mission is intended to be apolitical, as it should be. This is quite easy in the village; a bit less so in town during an election year. Not wearing a party’s chitenge clothes is not difficult (duh!), but the hand symbols can get me for both parties. Both of my hands have been broken multiple times over the years thanks to football, rugby, labor, etc., so when I wave, some of my fingers remain curled and I give a greeting resembling the koloko movement; therefore, I have to consciously remind myself to stretch out my fingers. With the PF symbol, it’s less of a problem, but I still make mistakes. Today, for example, I saw one of our local Rastafarian community and greeted him in their way (fists up, touch them, then tap the chest) before realizing the context and the people eyeing me. Whoops.
Though I knew the rally was ongoing (it is hard to miss in a town this small), I broke my usual rule of laying low during rallies to pick velvet beans and get fish. It’s fish chowder night! This is a small town! Nothing happens! I’m bored out of my skull!
Lunch was the first clue that it was a different day; PF youth and cadres (none of whom I recognized as local) were in the restaurant I haunt, drinking beer like they were on a mission and hollering along with the near-deafening music. I pounded my nshima and village chicken in record time and headed for the velvet beans. However, the warning I received from my buddy wrecked fish chowder night. Though I doubted anything happened in town, it’s never a good idea to find out firsthand.
So back I came; I listened to various PF party members speak from my back porch. Though the rally was at the football pitch a half-mile away, the speakers they used carried fairly well. Sata didn’t speak until the end of the day. The only comment I’ll make on his speech is that I think I speak much better Lozi than he does (he used a translator). Somehow, this was comforting to me as I picked apart sunnhemp, velvet beans, and bambara nuts and contemplated Zambian politics while anticipating my dinner of white bread.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
You can't see the forest for the exotic trees
This weekend I went up north to Mongu, the de facto capital of Barotseland. I went to attend a workshop on crafting a new cashew nut policy for the government, the first step in resuscitating the one crop that is proven to grow well here. It was led by industry representatives, and the meeting was composed of "stakeholders".
Brief of aside: "Stakeholders" is what you might call a buzz word ... Zambians in the development business toss it about with a careless abandon, but it rarely means a specific group of people (i.e., people who hold a stake in whatever is being planned). Anyway, suffice it for now to mean "everyone". Our everyone included representatives from nearly every government office, a few cooperative leaders, and some emergent farmers [not subsistence, but not yet commercial]. However, we forgot some stakeholders: Zambia Revenue Authority, Forestry Department, and (whoops!) representatives from the Baroste Royal Establishment (BRE) who hold all tenure over customary land in Western Province.
It was a bit tedious, and you could tell people were anxious to get to how the crop would be produced; however, it was more about defining (as a matter of government policy) who would take responsibility for extension, who would have priority to conduct research, etc. A necessary first step; without some policies to back up the crop, there can essentially be no possibility of an export market. No export crop = no production, because Zambia's consumption of cashews is measured in single tons.
After we got out around 13:00 hrs, we ate lunch, then I broke off to sell some peanut butter. Mongu is a substantially larger market than Senanga given it's significantly larger population (at least 40,000 and more likely 50,000). Furthermore, it features a broad array of wholesalers who handle the distribution of nearly everything to the rest of the districts in Western Province (Kalabo, Lukulu, Senanga, and Shang'ombo) and even further north to the western edge of Northwestern Province (Chavuma and Zambezi). Anyway, I didn't get too far before we had more orders than we have production capacity, so I stopped at 16:00 hrs. After washing up, I went up Lyambai Road and watched the sunset over the Barotse Floodplains at a small guesthouse enthusiastically named "Cheers!".
The Floodplains are considerably different in Mongu than in Senanga; first off, Senanga sits on the main channel of the Zambezi River, whereas Mongu is 25km east of the river. Second, in Senanga, you can see the headland to the west (known locally as "the West Bank"); the Floodplain, thus bounded and possessed of a horizon, seems comprehensible enough. In Mongu, you cannot see the far headland; the green swath of the Floodplains stretch unhindered to the north, west, and south. Gazing at the headland that stretches along the eastern edge, it seems more like the shoreline of a green sea. It's in subliminally beautiful, but its depth and size create in me a strange sense of acrophobia.
The walk back to the guesthouse gave me something to do the following day. Along the Lyambai Road, which seems to be the upscale part of town, is a single Gliricidia sepium tree. This is a big deal to a crazy agroforester like me; it is on par with Leucaena leucocephala as an alley-cropping species, and is one of the species we'd like to integrate into our Conservation Agriculture program as a supplement / substitute for mineral fertilizers. This tree is the fourth one I've seen in Western; unlike L. leacocephala, it's a rarity; I suspect from my previous experience that G. sepium don't volunteer readily (i.e. seeds falling from the tree easily germinate). Also, they tend to seed in the middle of the dry season (they are an exotic species) and the seeds are probably chewed up long before the first rains fall. Anyway, I decided to take a walk on Saturday and see if I could find another.
Zambians must think of me as exceedingly peculiar; whenever I'm walking around, I have my head cocked back, and swivel my gaze around in measured movements, looking for patterns in tree silhouettes. G. sepium has the same shape as the lovely jacaranda trees, though the leaves are remarkably different; Gliricidia's leaves resemble that of an ash, though much smaller, whereas jacaranda have tiny leaves. Unfortunately, all my patterns that I saw in my three-hour stroll through the dust and sand were jacarandas.
I did gain a sense, however, of the strange phenomenon of a forested landscape in a city which had formerly been a forest. My guess is that the original mukwa / miombo forest slowly disappeared in an ever-expanding circle around the nucleus of the town; as the old forest receded, compounds (Zambian-English for "neighborhoods") slowly appeared as land was allocated by either the BRE or the Mongu city council. As houses were built and people started to spend more time in the same place, they invariably planted trees.
Which trees were planted and why they were planted is an endlessly fascinating question for me. Some are fairly easy to figure out; papayas, mangos, guava, lemons, and to a lesser extent, mulberries. Others I can guess at are the ubiquitous cashews and the periodic eucalyptus [gum] or pines; likely the result of government forestry initiatives, which promote trees for timber or economic utility (and excludes most indigenous species). However, I can't for the life of me figure out how people decided to plant Persian lilac or jacaranda; was it for shade? The pleasant smell? The flowers?
The whole point is that unlike what I've been told informally and what I read between the lines of nearly every paper dealing with subsistence agriculture in Southern Africa, Zambians do not hate trees or are on some zealous Puritan mission to beat back the savage wilderness (see Bill Cronon pre-Wisconsin De-unionization travails for that bit of philosophy). Zambians cut trees for pretty good reasons: farming (food), charcoal (sale), firewood (cooking), timber (sale). Though the effects are not good, the reasons are the same as those in past generations in America, esp. for those of us from the Upper Midwest. They are trying by all means to lift themselves up out of a grinding poverty. Eventually, the forest returns, but in a remarkably different format, one designed for a changed human context.
I'm not saying that it is the same forest, or as "good". The mukwa forests are rare and don't replace themselves that quickly (or ever?), and usually, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. However, I have to empathize rather than criticize; out of Michigan's original pine forests, something like 600 acres remains that was never cut. The rest went towards the noble purpose of "building the country."
Makes it tough to point the finger ...
Brief of aside: "Stakeholders" is what you might call a buzz word ... Zambians in the development business toss it about with a careless abandon, but it rarely means a specific group of people (i.e., people who hold a stake in whatever is being planned). Anyway, suffice it for now to mean "everyone". Our everyone included representatives from nearly every government office, a few cooperative leaders, and some emergent farmers [not subsistence, but not yet commercial]. However, we forgot some stakeholders: Zambia Revenue Authority, Forestry Department, and (whoops!) representatives from the Baroste Royal Establishment (BRE) who hold all tenure over customary land in Western Province.
It was a bit tedious, and you could tell people were anxious to get to how the crop would be produced; however, it was more about defining (as a matter of government policy) who would take responsibility for extension, who would have priority to conduct research, etc. A necessary first step; without some policies to back up the crop, there can essentially be no possibility of an export market. No export crop = no production, because Zambia's consumption of cashews is measured in single tons.
After we got out around 13:00 hrs, we ate lunch, then I broke off to sell some peanut butter. Mongu is a substantially larger market than Senanga given it's significantly larger population (at least 40,000 and more likely 50,000). Furthermore, it features a broad array of wholesalers who handle the distribution of nearly everything to the rest of the districts in Western Province (Kalabo, Lukulu, Senanga, and Shang'ombo) and even further north to the western edge of Northwestern Province (Chavuma and Zambezi). Anyway, I didn't get too far before we had more orders than we have production capacity, so I stopped at 16:00 hrs. After washing up, I went up Lyambai Road and watched the sunset over the Barotse Floodplains at a small guesthouse enthusiastically named "Cheers!".
The Floodplains are considerably different in Mongu than in Senanga; first off, Senanga sits on the main channel of the Zambezi River, whereas Mongu is 25km east of the river. Second, in Senanga, you can see the headland to the west (known locally as "the West Bank"); the Floodplain, thus bounded and possessed of a horizon, seems comprehensible enough. In Mongu, you cannot see the far headland; the green swath of the Floodplains stretch unhindered to the north, west, and south. Gazing at the headland that stretches along the eastern edge, it seems more like the shoreline of a green sea. It's in subliminally beautiful, but its depth and size create in me a strange sense of acrophobia.
The walk back to the guesthouse gave me something to do the following day. Along the Lyambai Road, which seems to be the upscale part of town, is a single Gliricidia sepium tree. This is a big deal to a crazy agroforester like me; it is on par with Leucaena leucocephala as an alley-cropping species, and is one of the species we'd like to integrate into our Conservation Agriculture program as a supplement / substitute for mineral fertilizers. This tree is the fourth one I've seen in Western; unlike L. leacocephala, it's a rarity; I suspect from my previous experience that G. sepium don't volunteer readily (i.e. seeds falling from the tree easily germinate). Also, they tend to seed in the middle of the dry season (they are an exotic species) and the seeds are probably chewed up long before the first rains fall. Anyway, I decided to take a walk on Saturday and see if I could find another.
Zambians must think of me as exceedingly peculiar; whenever I'm walking around, I have my head cocked back, and swivel my gaze around in measured movements, looking for patterns in tree silhouettes. G. sepium has the same shape as the lovely jacaranda trees, though the leaves are remarkably different; Gliricidia's leaves resemble that of an ash, though much smaller, whereas jacaranda have tiny leaves. Unfortunately, all my patterns that I saw in my three-hour stroll through the dust and sand were jacarandas.
I did gain a sense, however, of the strange phenomenon of a forested landscape in a city which had formerly been a forest. My guess is that the original mukwa / miombo forest slowly disappeared in an ever-expanding circle around the nucleus of the town; as the old forest receded, compounds (Zambian-English for "neighborhoods") slowly appeared as land was allocated by either the BRE or the Mongu city council. As houses were built and people started to spend more time in the same place, they invariably planted trees.
Which trees were planted and why they were planted is an endlessly fascinating question for me. Some are fairly easy to figure out; papayas, mangos, guava, lemons, and to a lesser extent, mulberries. Others I can guess at are the ubiquitous cashews and the periodic eucalyptus [gum] or pines; likely the result of government forestry initiatives, which promote trees for timber or economic utility (and excludes most indigenous species). However, I can't for the life of me figure out how people decided to plant Persian lilac or jacaranda; was it for shade? The pleasant smell? The flowers?
The whole point is that unlike what I've been told informally and what I read between the lines of nearly every paper dealing with subsistence agriculture in Southern Africa, Zambians do not hate trees or are on some zealous Puritan mission to beat back the savage wilderness (see Bill Cronon pre-Wisconsin De-unionization travails for that bit of philosophy). Zambians cut trees for pretty good reasons: farming (food), charcoal (sale), firewood (cooking), timber (sale). Though the effects are not good, the reasons are the same as those in past generations in America, esp. for those of us from the Upper Midwest. They are trying by all means to lift themselves up out of a grinding poverty. Eventually, the forest returns, but in a remarkably different format, one designed for a changed human context.
I'm not saying that it is the same forest, or as "good". The mukwa forests are rare and don't replace themselves that quickly (or ever?), and usually, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. However, I have to empathize rather than criticize; out of Michigan's original pine forests, something like 600 acres remains that was never cut. The rest went towards the noble purpose of "building the country."
Makes it tough to point the finger ...
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Good question ...
This came across the wire from the pond and was worth repeating:
Carl-
Did this publication cross your radar? I just started skimming it and it seems interesting.
Also, I tried posting a question on your blog this morning but it didn't seem to want to accept it. What I wanted to ask was how you selected those two experimental crops, the velvet bean and the leucaena, if locals aren't using it. Just curious.
Everything here is just fine. R and C finished up last week, N is next Tuesday, and I'm on deck on June 16. I need to start writing!
Keep up the good work my friend. I read every word.
M
The answer (not to how to post a question, God knows, I just type at this thing) is that velvet bean and leucaena grow here in Senanga, whereas other agroforestry species (tephrosia, pigeon pea, gliricidia) are rare or unknown. However, there appears to be no rhyme or reason as to why they are here; my guess is sometime back (the Zamlish way of saying "the past"), someone planted leucaena and velvet, and they spread by accident more than anything. It's not like they are endemic; nature here is so full that there is little space for new species. In the case of the leucaena, humans usually remove them unless they are along a fence or the seeds, once laying on the ground, are devoured by bruichidae before they can germinate. In the case of velvet, they spread a bit easier and are more resistant to insects, but cows seem to like the seeds (along with nearly everything else ... so much for residue retention), so they are a bit hampered. ANYWAY ... because they are here, they satisfy three big requirements:
I'll save the adoption jeremiad for another day (tomorrow or Thursday), but suffice it to say that it is never what it seems. Leucaena and velvet are, in essence, our flinging noodles at the wall to see if they stick. What we try to avoid is Oscar Madison's treatment of Felix Ungar's spaghetti.
All the best.
Carl-
Did this publication cross your radar? I just started skimming it and it seems interesting.
Also, I tried posting a question on your blog this morning but it didn't seem to want to accept it. What I wanted to ask was how you selected those two experimental crops, the velvet bean and the leucaena, if locals aren't using it. Just curious.
Everything here is just fine. R and C finished up last week, N is next Tuesday, and I'm on deck on June 16. I need to start writing!
Keep up the good work my friend. I read every word.
M
The answer (not to how to post a question, God knows, I just type at this thing) is that velvet bean and leucaena grow here in Senanga, whereas other agroforestry species (tephrosia, pigeon pea, gliricidia) are rare or unknown. However, there appears to be no rhyme or reason as to why they are here; my guess is sometime back (the Zamlish way of saying "the past"), someone planted leucaena and velvet, and they spread by accident more than anything. It's not like they are endemic; nature here is so full that there is little space for new species. In the case of the leucaena, humans usually remove them unless they are along a fence or the seeds, once laying on the ground, are devoured by bruichidae before they can germinate. In the case of velvet, they spread a bit easier and are more resistant to insects, but cows seem to like the seeds (along with nearly everything else ... so much for residue retention), so they are a bit hampered. ANYWAY ... because they are here, they satisfy three big requirements:
- You know they can grow here, whereas other species are a big question mark in this sand.
- You can get seeds easily enough that are suited to the local environment.
- You can point at them when describing them to farmers who may of heard of the plant names but have no visual reference for what they are. Sight and touch are amazingly necessary for promotion.
I'll save the adoption jeremiad for another day (tomorrow or Thursday), but suffice it to say that it is never what it seems. Leucaena and velvet are, in essence, our flinging noodles at the wall to see if they stick. What we try to avoid is Oscar Madison's treatment of Felix Ungar's spaghetti.
All the best.
Monday, May 9, 2011
50kg Economics
Today I was listening to the late, great Chris LeDoux, a country-western bard who largely wrote his material out of his first-hand experience on the rodeo circuit in the 1970's. If any of you are big George Strait fans, try Chris out ... he's rough around the edges at first, but slowly grows on you.
LeDoux appeals to those of us who are of the anchorite persuasion, whether by intent or by accident; he sings quite about the loneliness of the road, hard living, the battering nature of his beloved profession (from what I gather, bullriding has a lifespan much shorter than an NFL player, though not quite as bad as a gymnast ... my guess is they quit around the same age as ice-skaters. It amazes me to see them last that long; regularly having a justly-agitated beast in the neighborhood of a ton throwing you headlong into the ground, then rumbling over to gore or stamp you into progressively smaller portions gets tough on the knees, I suppose.
It was playing today on my earbuds as I worked on a budgeting spreadsheet from around noon through most of the rest of the day to attempt to back-calculate the price of raw sunflower seeds [allenes]. We have a good idea of what to charge for wholesale prices through informal market surveys we carry out every month, but the variables include the price of plastic bottles (which has trended upward steadily with the cost of fuel), the cost of transporting those bottles from the manufacturer in Lusaka (400 miles away), labels, processing costs, our profit margins, and of course, depreciation of the equipment, in particular the massive oil expeller that was cast in China. After coming up with a spreadsheet in a way that was legible, I proceeded to fiddle with the all the variables to see what kind of price combinations would result. For example, if we sell 500mL bottles, our revenues per liter go up (yay!), but so do our costs (boo!) due to the higher volume of containers and the extra processing we have to do, forcing us to either slash our profit margin, raise the unit price, or lower the price we pay our producers (i.e., subsistence farmers who form our cooperative).
Incidit in scyllam cupiens vitare charybdim [He ran upon Scylla to avoid Charybis]. We'll likely work on the former two, because the whirlpool of disenchanted farmers is far more dangerous than a slightly higher price or a slightly lower profit margin. However, the whirlpool is still a gaping maw of a problem ... if we set the price of raw sunflower too low, farmers will abandon the crop next season, and we'll bury an excellent market opportunity. If we set it too high, we have to either cut our profit margin to the bone (ulp) or charge more for our product; furthermore, if our price is artificially high, the farmers probably won't accept a lower price in subsequent years.
It's worthwhile to mention that we are setting the price independent of the market price for sunflowers, which we still haven't ascertained. We are essentially eyeballing the price not off of what the market determines, but what we think (hope) is an low enough price that is acceptable to the farmers and will spur on further cultivation in the next rainy season. Late in the afternoon when Aka, Li-Li, and Mr. Mooto rolled back in from the field, we lobbed this back and forth for quite awhile before narrowing down the range to 45,000-55,000ZMK/50kg bag (1,500-1850ZMK/kg).
You have to understand that in this context, weight and the scales are nearly meaningless. If I tell a farmer "Hey, we'll pay you 1,500 kwacha per kilogram of sunflower", he or she will politely nod, or even smile in anticipation ... you are selling a 50kg bag, and 50 x 1,500 is 75,000 kwacha! Wow ... way more than the price for the same volume of maize bought by the government. However, they take on slightly mystified looks when you tell them that the 50kg bag weighs 30kgs when filled with sunflower. Huh? A 50kg bag is a 50kg bag. It's this big, see?
I guess the confusion comes back to mistrust; most scales in Zambia are rather tricky things that are flimsy affairs that are rarely accurate. For example, back in my original service as a health volunteer in Kasempa, one baby I weighed twice in consecutive weeks gained five pounds in a week despite a minor famine. It's hard to mess with a volume. Thinking about it, I realized most increments in rural or boma Zambia are in volumes ... the ubiquitous paintcan [meta] (equal to one gallon), used by nearly all marketeers and hammer mill operators comes to mind. Furthermore, using weights might be convenient in our simple economic models or for agricultural research, but volumes work far better for farmers as a measurement or prediction tool ... bags are comparatively cheap and more intuitive for their purposes. Being able to visualize the price of a bag allows a farmer to make a decision on how much and where to plant crops, a remarkably risky thing in a subsistence (hand-to-mouth) livelihood.
Huh ... gets me thinking again just typing through that. At least we have one thing going for us; every single family in Zambia uses at least 200 mL of cooking oil a day; if we make a low-cost, high-quality product, our market will literally be at our door.
LeDoux appeals to those of us who are of the anchorite persuasion, whether by intent or by accident; he sings quite about the loneliness of the road, hard living, the battering nature of his beloved profession (from what I gather, bullriding has a lifespan much shorter than an NFL player, though not quite as bad as a gymnast ... my guess is they quit around the same age as ice-skaters. It amazes me to see them last that long; regularly having a justly-agitated beast in the neighborhood of a ton throwing you headlong into the ground, then rumbling over to gore or stamp you into progressively smaller portions gets tough on the knees, I suppose.
It was playing today on my earbuds as I worked on a budgeting spreadsheet from around noon through most of the rest of the day to attempt to back-calculate the price of raw sunflower seeds [allenes]. We have a good idea of what to charge for wholesale prices through informal market surveys we carry out every month, but the variables include the price of plastic bottles (which has trended upward steadily with the cost of fuel), the cost of transporting those bottles from the manufacturer in Lusaka (400 miles away), labels, processing costs, our profit margins, and of course, depreciation of the equipment, in particular the massive oil expeller that was cast in China. After coming up with a spreadsheet in a way that was legible, I proceeded to fiddle with the all the variables to see what kind of price combinations would result. For example, if we sell 500mL bottles, our revenues per liter go up (yay!), but so do our costs (boo!) due to the higher volume of containers and the extra processing we have to do, forcing us to either slash our profit margin, raise the unit price, or lower the price we pay our producers (i.e., subsistence farmers who form our cooperative).
Incidit in scyllam cupiens vitare charybdim [He ran upon Scylla to avoid Charybis]. We'll likely work on the former two, because the whirlpool of disenchanted farmers is far more dangerous than a slightly higher price or a slightly lower profit margin. However, the whirlpool is still a gaping maw of a problem ... if we set the price of raw sunflower too low, farmers will abandon the crop next season, and we'll bury an excellent market opportunity. If we set it too high, we have to either cut our profit margin to the bone (ulp) or charge more for our product; furthermore, if our price is artificially high, the farmers probably won't accept a lower price in subsequent years.
It's worthwhile to mention that we are setting the price independent of the market price for sunflowers, which we still haven't ascertained. We are essentially eyeballing the price not off of what the market determines, but what we think (hope) is an low enough price that is acceptable to the farmers and will spur on further cultivation in the next rainy season. Late in the afternoon when Aka, Li-Li, and Mr. Mooto rolled back in from the field, we lobbed this back and forth for quite awhile before narrowing down the range to 45,000-55,000ZMK/50kg bag (1,500-1850ZMK/kg).
You have to understand that in this context, weight and the scales are nearly meaningless. If I tell a farmer "Hey, we'll pay you 1,500 kwacha per kilogram of sunflower", he or she will politely nod, or even smile in anticipation ... you are selling a 50kg bag, and 50 x 1,500 is 75,000 kwacha! Wow ... way more than the price for the same volume of maize bought by the government. However, they take on slightly mystified looks when you tell them that the 50kg bag weighs 30kgs when filled with sunflower. Huh? A 50kg bag is a 50kg bag. It's this big, see?
I guess the confusion comes back to mistrust; most scales in Zambia are rather tricky things that are flimsy affairs that are rarely accurate. For example, back in my original service as a health volunteer in Kasempa, one baby I weighed twice in consecutive weeks gained five pounds in a week despite a minor famine. It's hard to mess with a volume. Thinking about it, I realized most increments in rural or boma Zambia are in volumes ... the ubiquitous paintcan [meta] (equal to one gallon), used by nearly all marketeers and hammer mill operators comes to mind. Furthermore, using weights might be convenient in our simple economic models or for agricultural research, but volumes work far better for farmers as a measurement or prediction tool ... bags are comparatively cheap and more intuitive for their purposes. Being able to visualize the price of a bag allows a farmer to make a decision on how much and where to plant crops, a remarkably risky thing in a subsistence (hand-to-mouth) livelihood.
Huh ... gets me thinking again just typing through that. At least we have one thing going for us; every single family in Zambia uses at least 200 mL of cooking oil a day; if we make a low-cost, high-quality product, our market will literally be at our door.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Harvest season
Wow ... I am definitely disliking the new user interface for Blogspot ... you wait a long time while a little symbol circles around in the text editor. Maybe not long for others, but bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth, people ... not all information pipes are created equal. It reminds me of one of gmail's more appealing features when we signed up Mom; it was able to detect slow connections and consequently, had a much simpler interface one could opt to use. Oh well; wouldn't mean that much here, as people really hunt-and-peck when it comes to typing.
We're finally entering the cold [i.e., the cool dry] season. It's a relative term, meaning its not cold per se ... rather it's not as hot. Actually, check that; the late nights and just before dawn are actually quite chilly. Though it's hard to say what our temps will be, I've recorded 30F down on the Tonga Plateau two years ago at this time; we're a bit lower here, so we likely won't approach freezing, but high 30's wouldn't surprise me. High 30s doesn't sound bad for someone who grew up in the Upper Midwest, but the difference is that a) there is no temperature gradient between inside and outside, and b) this is Africa, for pete's sake! It can't get that cold in Africa! But somehow, it does, and it never fails to surprise me.
In the agricultural realm, this past and upcoming month roughly correspond to late September / early October back home, in the sense that people are putting up and laying by. Different from say, canning or storing things in a root cellar, but definitely a harvest period. What maize there was (conventional yields were stunted by our drought in February) is by now off the cobs and in the stick-and-daub grain bins, and people are starting to dig up their groundnuts [peanuts] and bambara nuts. It's far more of a continuous process here than in other parts of the country, as the lack of commodity markets and the inherent difficulty of growing maize causes people to diversify a bit. For example, though the maize is a wash, the sorghum [Sorghum bicolor] and pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum] seem to be doing alright and are just now starting to dry up; they originated in Africa and tend to be less drought-prone than the better yielding but infinitely more finicky Zea mays.
I don't have that much to harvest; my conservation agriculture plot was mostly a wash, and the only things that grew alright were the cowpeas and bambara nuts. To be fair, it was the lousiest soil I've ever seen; when weeds don't even grow, you know you have serious fertility issues. Anyway, it wasn't so big to make any real difference one way or another, and we'll pour the manure to it in a few weeks. No, what interests me this time of year are the random green manure or agroforestry species that grow wild around the town. Often planted out of curiosity or simply by mistake, we are blessed with a couple of really helpful species: In the case of the former, velvet beans [Mucuna pruriens], a creeping annual that fixes a lot of nitrogen and smothers undergrowth (imagine kudzu, but not quite as tough to eradicate], and for the latter, leucaena [Leucaena leucocephala], a fast-growing tree that also fixes nitrogen and produces a lot of high-value leaf-litter.
The leucaena isn't that tricky to harvest ... it produces huge volumes of flat, brownish-black seedpods in clusters, each pod containing 20-30 small, brown seeds. You simply grab a cluster of pods, yank them off the branch, and stuff them in a gunny-sack. If the pods are dry, they have a somewhat annoying tendency to split open when you touch them and spill seeds everywhere; however, the sheer volume of seeds makes this a rather small annoyance. After the gunny sack is full, I head home and put it in the sun for one or two days, after which I thresh the seeds. This is a mildly cathartic process of hitting the bags with a stick to break the dry pods open within the bag, spilling the seeds to the bottom. After a few whacks, I extract a few handfuls of now-empty pods and pitch them in the garden; I repeat this until most of the large pieces are gone. Then, I wait for a bit of a breeze and pour the seeds from one large bucket to another; the breeze blows the chaff off to the side. In lieu of a breeze, I use my lungs, though sometimes I get a bit dizzy from the effort (ah ... cheap thrills). Finally, I put the threshed seeds in a small, covered plastic bucket for storage, pitching in some dried tobacco and chilies from the market to deter any pests. In a good afternoon, I can get 4 or 5 kgs (10-12 lbs) of seed, which is probably enough for the next five years unless our project is wildly successful.
Velvet beans are a touch trickier. Unlike leucaena, they don't grow on a convenient tree; they are a climber and around here, they appear to grow on the edges of everything (hedges, field boundaries, etc.) [Brief aside: this leads me to believe no one knows what they are used for, and therefore grow in places where people don't bother removing them.] Anyway, these areas are rife with nettles, blackjack (Spanish needle), thorny bushes, or in the case of the euphorbia hedges, a extruded plant latex that sticks all the hairs on my arms together (and can blind you). The seedpods are tucked in the midst of all this infernal plant life, and are themselves covered with fine hairs (hence the name). One of the few definitive things I can say after seven years in Zambia is that you should never touch any plant with a velvety exterior; as a defense mechanism (or perhaps to aid in propagation, who knows?), they induce a major itch reaction ... so, I wear gloves as I grasp the handfuls of pods and stuff them into gunny sacks. No threshing for those; the easier path (and infinitely less painful with regards to handling) is to stack the pods in a heap and wait for the sun to dry them sufficiently to the point at which they crack open on their own. Also, by that point most of the velvet has shed from the seeds, making them far easier to handle.
I consider it a blessing that the Lozi seem less likely to ask you obvious questions like "What are you doing?" than other groups I've lived with; they seem to figure out that a guy pulling seeds off a tree and stuffing them in a bag is collecting seeds. Another aside: the public nature of my job doesn't allow much time to myself, so I treasure anytime I'm granted any modicum of anonymity. When I do inevitably get queried, I tell them I'm gathering seeds for farmers; if pressed, I explain the basics of why the trees/beans are important (soil conservation, fertility, etc), usually summarizing it as "They put manure [a generalized English word for anything like droppings, fertilizer, compost, etc.] in the soil." Though the former is true, I don't have many illusions about many farmers picking up these techniques in the short or medium-term; in fact, I've likely gathered hundreds of times more seed than anyone might plant.
What I can't explain to people is that I pick the seeds mostly out of a small glimmer of hope that by putting up and laying by, someday, some miracle day when farmers might adopt a few of these species, we have some on hand and won't have to turn them away.
The other, and likely the more influential, reason I can't explain to people is that I get bored out of my skull here and need to keep busy to keep from going crazy.
We're finally entering the cold [i.e., the cool dry] season. It's a relative term, meaning its not cold per se ... rather it's not as hot. Actually, check that; the late nights and just before dawn are actually quite chilly. Though it's hard to say what our temps will be, I've recorded 30F down on the Tonga Plateau two years ago at this time; we're a bit lower here, so we likely won't approach freezing, but high 30's wouldn't surprise me. High 30s doesn't sound bad for someone who grew up in the Upper Midwest, but the difference is that a) there is no temperature gradient between inside and outside, and b) this is Africa, for pete's sake! It can't get that cold in Africa! But somehow, it does, and it never fails to surprise me.
In the agricultural realm, this past and upcoming month roughly correspond to late September / early October back home, in the sense that people are putting up and laying by. Different from say, canning or storing things in a root cellar, but definitely a harvest period. What maize there was (conventional yields were stunted by our drought in February) is by now off the cobs and in the stick-and-daub grain bins, and people are starting to dig up their groundnuts [peanuts] and bambara nuts. It's far more of a continuous process here than in other parts of the country, as the lack of commodity markets and the inherent difficulty of growing maize causes people to diversify a bit. For example, though the maize is a wash, the sorghum [Sorghum bicolor] and pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum] seem to be doing alright and are just now starting to dry up; they originated in Africa and tend to be less drought-prone than the better yielding but infinitely more finicky Zea mays.
I don't have that much to harvest; my conservation agriculture plot was mostly a wash, and the only things that grew alright were the cowpeas and bambara nuts. To be fair, it was the lousiest soil I've ever seen; when weeds don't even grow, you know you have serious fertility issues. Anyway, it wasn't so big to make any real difference one way or another, and we'll pour the manure to it in a few weeks. No, what interests me this time of year are the random green manure or agroforestry species that grow wild around the town. Often planted out of curiosity or simply by mistake, we are blessed with a couple of really helpful species: In the case of the former, velvet beans [Mucuna pruriens], a creeping annual that fixes a lot of nitrogen and smothers undergrowth (imagine kudzu, but not quite as tough to eradicate], and for the latter, leucaena [Leucaena leucocephala], a fast-growing tree that also fixes nitrogen and produces a lot of high-value leaf-litter.
The leucaena isn't that tricky to harvest ... it produces huge volumes of flat, brownish-black seedpods in clusters, each pod containing 20-30 small, brown seeds. You simply grab a cluster of pods, yank them off the branch, and stuff them in a gunny-sack. If the pods are dry, they have a somewhat annoying tendency to split open when you touch them and spill seeds everywhere; however, the sheer volume of seeds makes this a rather small annoyance. After the gunny sack is full, I head home and put it in the sun for one or two days, after which I thresh the seeds. This is a mildly cathartic process of hitting the bags with a stick to break the dry pods open within the bag, spilling the seeds to the bottom. After a few whacks, I extract a few handfuls of now-empty pods and pitch them in the garden; I repeat this until most of the large pieces are gone. Then, I wait for a bit of a breeze and pour the seeds from one large bucket to another; the breeze blows the chaff off to the side. In lieu of a breeze, I use my lungs, though sometimes I get a bit dizzy from the effort (ah ... cheap thrills). Finally, I put the threshed seeds in a small, covered plastic bucket for storage, pitching in some dried tobacco and chilies from the market to deter any pests. In a good afternoon, I can get 4 or 5 kgs (10-12 lbs) of seed, which is probably enough for the next five years unless our project is wildly successful.
Velvet beans are a touch trickier. Unlike leucaena, they don't grow on a convenient tree; they are a climber and around here, they appear to grow on the edges of everything (hedges, field boundaries, etc.) [Brief aside: this leads me to believe no one knows what they are used for, and therefore grow in places where people don't bother removing them.] Anyway, these areas are rife with nettles, blackjack (Spanish needle), thorny bushes, or in the case of the euphorbia hedges, a extruded plant latex that sticks all the hairs on my arms together (and can blind you). The seedpods are tucked in the midst of all this infernal plant life, and are themselves covered with fine hairs (hence the name). One of the few definitive things I can say after seven years in Zambia is that you should never touch any plant with a velvety exterior; as a defense mechanism (or perhaps to aid in propagation, who knows?), they induce a major itch reaction ... so, I wear gloves as I grasp the handfuls of pods and stuff them into gunny sacks. No threshing for those; the easier path (and infinitely less painful with regards to handling) is to stack the pods in a heap and wait for the sun to dry them sufficiently to the point at which they crack open on their own. Also, by that point most of the velvet has shed from the seeds, making them far easier to handle.
I consider it a blessing that the Lozi seem less likely to ask you obvious questions like "What are you doing?" than other groups I've lived with; they seem to figure out that a guy pulling seeds off a tree and stuffing them in a bag is collecting seeds. Another aside: the public nature of my job doesn't allow much time to myself, so I treasure anytime I'm granted any modicum of anonymity. When I do inevitably get queried, I tell them I'm gathering seeds for farmers; if pressed, I explain the basics of why the trees/beans are important (soil conservation, fertility, etc), usually summarizing it as "They put manure [a generalized English word for anything like droppings, fertilizer, compost, etc.] in the soil." Though the former is true, I don't have many illusions about many farmers picking up these techniques in the short or medium-term; in fact, I've likely gathered hundreds of times more seed than anyone might plant.
What I can't explain to people is that I pick the seeds mostly out of a small glimmer of hope that by putting up and laying by, someday, some miracle day when farmers might adopt a few of these species, we have some on hand and won't have to turn them away.
The other, and likely the more influential, reason I can't explain to people is that I get bored out of my skull here and need to keep busy to keep from going crazy.
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