A SIMPLE design to improve food storage is being developed by the charity Concern Worldwide.
Villages are being provided with store huts that are raised on stilts, which both helps if there is flooding and prevents rats from ruining produce.
The little silver devices on the legs of this hut in Nhangalaze village in Zambezia district, which stores seed such as rice, stop rodents from running up into the huts.
The huts also have a design that is more resilient to cyclones, and which is also being used in the huts in which most villagers in Mozambique live.
“Up to 60 per cent of grain can be lost to rodents,” says Niall Tierney, the Limavady man who is Concern’s country director in Mozambique.
Improving storage is one of the many strategies that Concern and the World Food Programme are pursuing to improve food security.
Small farmers do not have the scale or clout to get access to the general food market.
“People will not buy one bag,” says Lola Castro, Mozambique’s WFP country director.
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