This article in the Globe & Mail points out that Organic Foods are no safer than non organic foods when it comes to normal food safety risks such as microbial infection, chemical changes and foreign material contamination.

To me this is quite obvious, but it apparently is not to the consumer. Hopefully, growers and processors all understand this and apply the necessary quality and safety management practices that are applied to all food.

Have just listened to the parliamentary debate on what is now called a national emergency and heard Minerals and Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjica say we should go to bed earlier to “grow and get cleverer” and that we should use alternate energy in the form of gas and wood!

Minister Erwin admitted maintenance capacity, coal quality and coal delivery problems had been some of the factors behind the situation.

Having recently spent lot of time scouring the INTERNET I have been struck by the focus that there is now on two issues that impact on development in Africa – Biofuels and BOP enterprise models.

Biofuels

As Europe and the USA see the effect expanding refining is having on their agriculture and understand the overall efficiencies there seems to be a move towards looking at sourcing inputs from countries with more tropical climates where higher agricultural production efficiencies are possible. This in turn means that land, hopefully not that currently used for feeding ourselves, is cultivated – possibly clearing forests (palm oil), risking the spread of alien species (jatropha) or using other resources (eg sugar irrigation) on behalf of those countries who can’t achieve efficiencies make production economically sustainable.

BOP

Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) is an approach/model based on a view advanced by CJ Prahad that the 4 billion people who live on less than a dollar a day, are ignored by multinationals, although in sum they represent a large market. He, therefore, promoted the opportunity offered by this market, improving the supply to the poor and spinning off other opportunities through the supply chain.

Others have challenged this approach questioning whether the market is large enough to interest multinationals and proposing instead that efforts at alleviating poverty should be based on establishing business in or partnerships with enterprises at he bottom of the pyramid.

Both of these of course impact on food processing, in particular when considering it as a development tool for Africa. I will therefore blog on them as much as personal learning (BOP) and staying abreast excercises at www.agribusiness.wordpress.com and maybe http://digivu2nd.blogspot.com/

I would be very interested to get your ideas, concerns and feedback on these issues.

Preservation of foods is central to any food processing operation and specially important to small scale processors as it simplifies logistics. Food Technologists know that preserving acidic foods is safer and easier than low acidity foods and more appropriate to small scale processing.

Food Science a joint venture between CSIRO and the government of Victoria has published this as part of their online information for SME processors.

It defines the range of products and their acidity and defines processes that can be used. It focusses on the proven fact that so long as a foods equilibrium pH is below 4.5 there is no chance of food poisoning. It describes the various types of food spoilage organisms and compares their survival / activity under the conditions of processing.

I have mentioned my intention to put some focus on the issue of food loss/waste. There are a lot of quotes and figures I have seen over the years (maybe I will put these together in a formal way), cereal losses can be 15 to 25%, fruit & vegetable losses were once measured at 62% in a Tanzanian study, the world produces much more food that is uses, USA uses three times more agricultural output than it required for healthy lives and the UK recently found that food processing generated 1.8 million tons a year of degradable waste while households throw away 6.7 million tons of food a day.

For now I am just showing a food processing solution to a particular waste problem.

This describes the use of osmotic drying to produce a high value processed product from pears with slight defects. In South Africa damaged fruit is often diverted to juice production but the value addition is low.

There has been quite a bit in the media recently about the usefulness of Tshwane and Eskom sites as a means of helping with the management of power cuts.

But they really don’t work! the information is not reliable / usable! See screenshots below

Eskom showed power cuts underway in their meter but stated they weren’t any on 22/01/08

Tshwane showed no interruptions for more than an hour after the lights went out on 24/01/08

I have many other cases where the information was not useful!

Another issue is that unless blessed with a UPS or generator or a wi-fi hotspot, there is nothing to see while the cut is underway! You then tend to look when power is back on and say well maybe its just because I wasn’t look before it went off.

Is there not another solution eg better prediction models, sms notification, warning by “pre shutdown”?

This article seems to indicate that there is now sufficient proof to accept that organic food are analytically more nutritional than non organic food especially in the antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. However, now comes the argument that variety, handling and cooking could eliminate these differences.

Do not these kid of differences also apply to non organic fruit and vegetables, where we worry little about it? – misguidedly I believe, because of a lack of information.

Read the full story…

What is interesting is a researcher’s more generay statement

“What I’d like to tell everyone is to grow food when you can, support local farm systems when you can, try to buy organic and, whatever you do, buy fresh and cook it yourself.”

This morning on AgriTV, Dr Kirsten from the University of Pretoria spoke about there investigation into the potential of using the Geographic Indication (GI) approach to adding additional value to mutton products from the Karoo.

Unfortunately, Dr Krsten’s part of the information is in Afrikaans, but is mainly a general discussion of the potential of GI, which can certify that foods have certain qualities or enjoy certain reputations, due to their geographical origin. He also identified the need for work to establish whether the Karoo Lamb is really a distinct product.

The second half of the article is in English and outlines the techniques used by Christine Leighton of ARC to prove that Karoo Lamb does in fact have a unique taste. This is hypothesised to be a result of the Karoo bush the sheep graze. In fact attempts to find differences between different breeds of sheep and between sheep from different areas outside the Karoo.

I was wandering what the opportunities there are within Africa? Is anyone active with surveying the opportunities?

Yes there is a competition for the best Fish and Chip Shop in the UK, although I understand there are now more curry shops!

Click on the image of the page to read about the winners