Purdue Improved Cowpea Storage (PICS) Project

InterAction Washington, DC May 4, 2011

Project Overview
Goal: 50% of cowpea on farms in West and Central Africa (WCA) will be appropriately stored with nonchemical, hermetic storage by May 2012. Benefits:
Directly for 3.4 million cowpea growing households or about 30 million people in those households. Indirectly for millions of cowpea consumers who will have less expensive cowpea late in the marketing year with less danger of misused pesticides.

PICS Has Two Primary Thrusts

Village Extension activities Creating demand Storage demonstrations in all villages where cowpea is grown as a cash crop Message reinforced by radio, TV and other media So far, PICS has been in over 29,000 villages World Visions Role On the ground involvement in PICS project essential to create demand Sensitization Village-level PICS bag demonstrations Open-the-Bag Ceremonies

PICS Has Two Primary Thrusts

Supply chain development Creating supply Work with plastics manufacturers to make the right kind of bags so far worked with five manufacturers in five countries Develop the distribution system for PICS bags to the village level this has been the bottleneck of the project

Creating Demand for PICS Bags

PICS in 29,000 Villages in 10 Countries
Village Demonstrations
Niger Anticipated 2007/2008 2008/2009 2009/2010 2010/2011 2011/2012 Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 5,209 100 5,630 Actual Totals 5,730

Burkina Faso
Nigeria Mali Benin Togo Senegal Ghana Cameroon Chad

2,724
10,000 2,000 943 1,000 1,951 2,000 1,451 1,500

100

2,761
103

454
11,131 2,111 469 906 400 0 495 85 617 2,000 1,465 200 Planned Planned

3,315
11,634 2,111 964 991 617 2,000 1,465 200

Totals

28,778

200

8,494

15,071

5,262

29,027

PICS activities had not begun PICS village activities completed

Approach to Sack Supply Chain

Manufacturers -Media efforts with Radio and TV - PICS consultant Distributors/ wholesalers

Work with local manufacturers and entrepreneurs

Semi-wholesalers

Vendors

Retailers and roaming vendors

PICS Bag Manufacturing and Sale

2007-2010 PICS bag orders from the project and others

The PICS bag supply chain is moving from project-owned to private sector activities.

Storage Methods Used by Farmers for 2009 Cowpea Storage Methods Used by Farmers for 2009 Cowpea
50

45 38 30 22 25 18 6 2 6 29 25 18 7 1 29

10

20

30

40

Burkina Faso
Other Hermetic Traditional

Niger DT
Double bag Insecticide

Niger MZT
Triple bag

Among non-Adoptors Availability is Key Constraint

100 Use other methods 80
65

Price

Availability
64

Low production
70

Others
68 57

60
40

54

56

30 12 14 17 8
4 3 19 8

29

20 0

16
9

16 1
4

8 1 0

1 3

Niger DT

Niger MZT

Burkina Faso Nigeria-Jigawa Nigeria-Kano Nigeria-Katsina

Figure 2. Reason for non-adoption of PICS technology in Niger, Burkina Faso and Nigeria. Source: Studies on adoption of PICS bags in 2010 in Niger, Burkina Faso and Nigeria

Average distance to nearest PICS retailer was 5.8 km in Niger DT and over 13 km in Niger MZT.

Challenges
The development of the supply chain, especially the distribution system, has been the bottleneck of the project.

Problems include:
Distributors are reluctant to invest Vendors have very limited capital Legal system not well developed in most of West and Central Africa Farmers complain about the distance to the point of sale

Heather Fabris, Purdue University, hfabries@purdue.edu John Ivaska, World Vision http://www.ag.purdue.edu/ipia/pics/Pages/Home.aspx