Qiang Zhang
Department of Biosystems Engineering, University of Manitoba, Canada

Significant amounts of the food produced in developing countries are lost after harvest, posting a serious threat to food security. China produced about 590 million tons of grain in 2012. Over 60% of grain produced is stored on 240 million individual farms and the on-farm losses are estimated to be 8% - 10%, or about 28 - 35 million tons every year. One of the significant causes of losses is poor storage, in particular on small household farms. These losses may be minimized by using appropriate storage technologies. A recent FAO study showed that using hermetically sealed silos reduced the post-harvest losses from 15% - 20% to less than 1% - 2% in Afghanistan.
Some challenges in reducing post-harvest losses during storage in China include: the large number of small farms where small amounts of grain are stored (making it difficult to implement technologies); the lack of technologies suitable for small household farms and for farmers with relative low level of education; the lack of economic incentives for farmers to use technologies to reduce the losses; and the lack of government support (relative to supporting other types of farm machinery, such as tractors). As the farming structure changes in China (small household farms will evolve to “large grain producers”), technologies and equipment will be needed to store grain to reduce post-harvest losses. Therefore, developing grain storage technologies and equipment should be an integral part of the overall agricultural mechanization and modernization in China.
Grain storage technologies and equipment are relatively mature in developed countries. Although they are mostly for large-scale farms, many concepts, such as ecosystem approaches in solving grain storage problems, can be adopted for Chinese conditions. This presentation will briefly review grain storage technologies in North America. Potential modes (scenarios) of on-farm grain storage and technologies for Chinese conditions will be proposed and discussed.