Supporting Youth to Reduce Food Loss and Waste

Our latest episode with Jacob Ricker-Gilbert, Wyatt Pracht, and Patrick Ketiem of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Processing and Post Harvest Handling (FPIL) explores the role of youth in reducing food loss and waste. The speakers share findings from a recent project conducted in Kenya, an area where youth unemployment and smallholder farmers lacking access to agricultural inputs are two major challenges. To try and address these issues, the project conducted a randomized control trial with agricultural youth clubs to train 397 youths in business concepts, FLW reduction management and gender considerations; Youth were also linked with agricultural input suppliers and provided the opportunity to sell post-harvest inputs that included hermetic bags and low-cost moisture meters called hygrometers. The study increased access to inputs that help reduce FLW and increased the incomes of certain youth. The median youth who participated in the project gained an $10 additional monthly income. For more information, read the recent blog from FPIL.

Transcript

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Welcome to

USAID's Kitchen Sink: 0:07

A Food Loss and Waste podcast. I'm your producer, Nika Larian, 30 to 40% of the food that is produced is either lost or wasted contributing to a global food crisis with over 800 million going to bed hungry. Listen on as USAID experts speak with researchers and development professionals to explore solutions to this critical issue that demands a kitchen sink approach when it comes to climate, food security and food system sustainability. We have no time to waste. Thank you for joining us for the Food Loss and Waste Podcast. This episode will explore actors to reduce food loss and waste- the private sector. This podcast is hosted by the U.S. Research Community of Practice Subgroup on Food Loss and Waste and will feature interviews with subject matter experts to explore the implications of and approaches to addressing food loss and waste. My name is Colin Van Buren and I am a Climate Youth and Inclusion Advisor in the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security at USAID And today I will be speaking with Jacob Ricker-Gilbert, Wyatt Pracht, and Patrick Ketiem from the Food Processing Innovation Lab. Welcome, Jake, Wyatt, and Patrick. Please introduce yourselves. Thank you, Collin. I'm Jake Ricker-Gilbert, a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University. And I direct the food processing and Post-harvest Loss Innovation Lab (FPIL) that seeks to reduce food loss and waste and scale up food loss and waste reducing technologies in Kenya and Senegal. Thank you. Thank you, Collin. My name is Wyatt Pracht I'm a current master's student in the Department of Agricultural Economics, a Purdue university. And I've been working on the study that we're going to talk about today. So excited to be here. Thank you, my name is Patrick Ketiem I am assigned a post at the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) Based in– Thank you very much Great thank you all so much. It's wonderful to have you here on the podcast. And my first question is actually going to be directed to Jake. So Jake, can you please describe the study design and results for the FPIL’s, especially with youth in Kenya? And can you emphasize maybe the youth that were most successful there and their stories? Absolutely. Thank you. So this work was funded by FPIL and also the Laser Pulse Consortium. That's a USAID project. And it sought to try to address 2 challenges that are prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa. The first is youth unemployment and underemployment, and the second is how do we scale up and get food lost and waste preventing technologies, specifically loss, reducing hermetic storage bags and low cost moisture meters to farmers at the end of the supply chain. So what we did was, was to set up this this study, this intervention is a randomized controlled trial with rural youth in eastern Kenya, the counties of Machakos, Makueni and Katui. We targeted youth groups so youth that were members of groups that were already organized in the clubs. And we randomly picked 20 clubs to participate this year and 20 clubs served as a control for the next year that we followed in the first year and we, the clubs that were treated, we randomly picked ten members within each club to participate in the project and the project linked those youth that were selected with agro-dealers. So people who sell post-harvest inputs and other inputs through the private sector, we provided them training with Kauru leading the training and they were linked with the agro dealer and they were given inputs on collateral hermetic bags and low-cost moisture meters to sell on a commission basis with the agro dealer. And the hope was that they would sell these inputs, obviously make money and establish relationships with the agro-dealers. That would continue. And the outcomes we were interested in measuring were obviously income through sales and potentially increased other activities related to that business of selling. And then we wanted to see if there was an effect on consumption and in addition and Wyatt’s going to talk about this a little bit: motivation and aspirations. So this started at the end of last year, the end of 2021 youth were trained. And then in the season that started around January of 2022, when the harvest came in around end of January or early February, the youth were given the bags. The youth put up collateral for the bags. They put up about 20% of the value of the bags to show commitment. And then they went out and started selling. And then after harvest, about three months later, we went back and followed up with the youth to see how they did. And what we found was interesting was kind of what you might expect with the new business start up that you're starting that some people did really well. Let's say the top 25% of the distribution did well and made money and was successful and will probably continue selling. But the lower part of the distribution really wasn't successful, was it really for them? And what we found that was interesting was that the people who had something going on already, for example, they had some kind of business Already, it worked for them to sell these additional products as part of their product line. So for example, we had one young woman who sold women's clothing at a market. She just added the hermetic bags and the moisture meters to her product line. Also the taxi, the motorcycle taxis like the boda boda drivers, they did well because when they had customers riding behind them on their back, they would start selling the bag. So so that was kind of interesting to see. Other quick, interesting things. When we talk about youth, we're talking about the age range from 18 to 35. So the older people within that range, the people that were, say, closer to 30, the older youth did better, possibly because they were more motivated, they had more training and they needed to get things going. Then the younger youth who are less established and half of our participants were women, and women we found did just as well as men. So in terms of impacts, it was gender-neutral. It wasn't like the young women did worse. They did just as well on average. So those are the main findings. I think, you know, a certain number of people did well and will continue, but some people didn't. But I think it is a good way to help get inputs out to farmers who weren't using them before and it will provide some employment for rural youth. So that's all that's great. Yeah. Thanks for that overview and it's great of course for my position. Great to hear about ways that we can engage youth and include youth in our programs and see them find success even if it may not be all of them. So I'd like to actually turn it over to Wyatt to ask to dig more into this a little bit and ask you why. What do you see as the unique opportune cities that youth have, especially to reduce the loss and waste? And why do you think it's important to engage youth in this issue? Thank you, Colin. I'm actually going to start by answering the second question first and then tie it back into the first question. So a lot of the time when people think about rural youth, these people are often working in highly seasonal and are often underemployed individuals. So you can think about this as having gaps in their labor calendars where they're not able to work in economic activities as much as they would. So potentially in times of down economic times, when maybe they aren't working in agriculture and they're just sitting idle, one of the things we wanted to look at with this study was being able to fill those gaps. So if by doing that, we wanted to involve them in the post-harvest value chain by selling inputs to smaller farmers. So as Jake kind of alluded to already, our study had minimal impact probably for the majority of the youth, but was successful for a small number at the top of the income distribution who may have already had other resources and may have been more well equipped to do better in the study versus those who didn't. And I think one thing to keep in mind is that this has kind of been a larger theme that has been shown from studies that have evaluated business in technical training programs throughout the world, not only involved in agriculture, but involved in other sectors such as business training, where a lot of the time you provide people with training. But most of the time there has been a lack of impact. But that's not to say that there haven't been positive things come out of this study. One of the in particular to food waste, one of the things that we've seen is that the youth were actually able to connect new market linkages. So from our first follow-up, we noticed that a bunch that a bunch of farmers– so over 100 farmers reported either adopting a hermetic storage bag, which is just a three layer bag that has kind of been scaled up throughout East Africa that allows farmers to store grain in a safer, airtight position. So that way either mold or pests don't deal with it during storage, and then additionally, farmers also reported having their their grain moisture measured to see if the grain was safe for consumption. So that was something that was really important. So I think potentially youth have an important role to play in being able to create these linkages and help kind of extend these technologies out throughout the value chain. But moving forward, they were just need to be more incentives identified for those youth to potentially have more remunerative benefits to continue going on. And in terms of aspirations, we did notice that youth who had higher income aspirations at baseline did better than those with lower aspirations. And this is something that we kind of want to look into more. So actually we're returning to the field next month to actually see if there was a shift in people's aspirations over the medium term. So our baseline was last November and December. So potentially seeing if these sorts of interventions can lead to people's increased aspirations and see how that motivates them over the longer term. And with that, I'll turn it over to you and Patrick. Thanks. Yeah, that's that's great to hone in on. And I think you started touching on this, but my question for Patrick is kind of hopefully going to expand on that a little bit and ask Patrick what arguments should be made to youth to motivate them to adopt and sell technologies and practices to reduce Food loss and waste? What is it? Thank you Collin and I think that's a very nice question to address in developing countries like Kenya youth constitutes a very critical segment that can be able to drive transformation in agriculture. Indeed, if we have to achieve food security in nutrition amidst other challenges that are facing the continent and investing in society We, therefore, need to adopt very critical technologies and practices and in this case, therefore, we must look at the issues that would be able to motivate the youths to a top and be able to spearhead the relevant technologies. And I'm going to highlight some of these key issues. One of them that I think is very critical is to showcase to the youths that agriculture is part of enterprise. I think that's what's lacking and with huge opportunities to top it, especially at the last mile, you know, the youth comes across every area. So if we can be able to showcase to the youths that agriculture is profitable, then they can be able to be motivated to really be able to sell the relavent technology. The other aspect that I want to touch is the issues of investing, developing technologies that are digital, digital marketing apps. And I'm looking because our youths, Are in the bracket of the digital world. So youth would be able to appreciate technologies that are up to date in terms of the applications. And I'm looking at the issues like why put the technologies in a model like the … model? This would really make youth not look more for energy, but using their brains and the digital and in that case they can be willing to engage in agriculture. And this is a very critical area even– many studies revealed that youths cannot participate in technologies that are labor intensive. There are aspects that are very critical to consider as part of motivation is to look at the issues of bundling some of the potential technologies that can help introducing food loss and waste with other Farm driven– market demand products such as fertilizers pesticides. So we look at these post-harvest technologies with other inputs in in abundance so that it's not all inputs up as the technologies that the youth would be concerned. So because if you look at agriculture, it is seasonal, it is in segmented. So there is production, there is the post-harvest and based on marketing. So we need we need to bundle many of these technologies so that that the youth can be able to to enjoy and be able to appreciate the value chain. The other aspect that I want to touch is we really we need we need to develop a reward system so that and I think the access in the agriculture sector can look at a reward system so that and I'm talking about governments local governments so that the best performing youth can be recognized. This would really make the youth and I'm thinking issues like recognizing youth to possibly take them on holiday with family. So these can really motivate you to really spend more time to look at some of these technologies and be able to market them and be able to adopt the last one, the last topic I want to cover With my time is to strengthen the transportation systems and I know the youth, people would want to really navigate within the African cities. But I'm sure if governments and development partners can collaborate with government can strengthen the transportation systems. Then it means that youth can be able to reach each and every corner of the society. And by so they they will find it easier for them to to really move and sell the technologies and the last the last year but I would want to mention is issues of training opportunities. What we want we want to train the youth and farmers on issues of post-harvest handling as a key source of reducing post harvest loss. Suppose that for example, development issues of record keeping, I'm sure the youth engaging with this technology without some of this knowledge. So we need we need to package so that they can also look at their at opportunities beyond the technologies and be able to amass a lot of knowledge. And I really want to thank you for the opportunity to participate in this. Podcast recording. Thank you very much, colleagues. Thank you to Patrick. Yeah, it was great to hear you kind of speak to both sort of like specific things that can encourage youth but also speak to the broader enabling environment and how to support them in that as well. So it was great to kind of hear. So I'd like to just quickly thank all three of you. Thanks, Jacob, Wyatt, and Patrick for sharing your perspectives on food loss and waste, and especially from this youth angle which I know is near and dear to my heart. And yeah, thank you so much for joining us on our podcast and we look forward to speaking again, hopefully soon. Thank you for tuning in to USAID's Kitchen Sink. This podcast was produced by Nika Larian and is organized by the USAID Food Loss and Waste Community of Practice co-chairs Ahmed Kablan and Ann Vaughn. Additional thanks goes to Feed the Future. The U.S. government's global food security initiative and the USAID's Center for Nutrition.