(Press-News.org) URBANA, Ill. - Women's ability to work as entrepreneurs can help alleviate poverty and malnutrition in developing countries. As local governments and development organizations aim to encourage business opportunities, it's important to identify projects suited for women's lives in rural households.
The soy kit, which includes common household items such as a pot, spoon, thermometer, and cheese cloth, enables entrepreneurs to create value-added products from soy in small-scale household settings. The kit has potential to improve the economic conditions of Malawi women in a sustainable way, a University of Illinois study concludes.
"The larger issue is about adding value to agricultural products in the developing world as a means of raising incomes," says Pete Goldsmith, director of the Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL) at Illinois and corresponding author on the study, published in Food and Nutrition Bulletin.
"Women are often the ones taking care of children and elders, and holding the household unit together, so if they have access to more money and better nutrition that's a critical component for improving the standard of living in developing countries," he explains.
"Not all agricultural technologies are consistent with women's skill sets, time constraints, and complementary resources. A food-based business such as the soy kit appears to be appropriate for women entrepreneurs but we had to test it to learn if that held up in practice," Goldsmith says.
Malnutrition Matters, a Canadian non-government organization (NGO), developed the soy kit. The USAID-funded Feed the Future Malawi Agriculture Diversification Activity distributed the kit to more than 200 households over a period of 18 months. The SIL researchers assisted with the rollout and helped train the women in bookkeeping so they could collect data on the project's economic feasibility.
The women entrepreneurs use the kit to process the soybeans and extract milk, from which they can make products such as flavored beverages, yogurt, cheese, and ice cream. The process also yields a co-product, okara, a high-protein pulp used for animal feed or as an ingredient in baking or food preparation.
The soy kit is a viable alternative to the soy cow, a popular technology widely implemented throughout Africa. The soy cow also extracts milk from soybeans to create value-added products. While it does so well, it is an expensive piece of equipment that produces large quantities of milk, requiring dedicated space, electricity, and access to refrigeration, Goldsmith explains.
The soy kit is a much more nimble tool, appropriate for individual households and easily adapted to local markets.
"The products have a shelf life for a couple hours, and you only make as much as you think you can sell. You don't need cold storage such as a refrigerator or freezer. You can put the products in sachets with some ice and take them to sell at fairs and by the roadside," Goldsmith says.
"The women know what people like, how to price the products, and where to find their customers. The project can leverage women's intrinsic knowledge of the marketplace," he notes.
Goldsmith and co-author Chungman Kim, an undergraduate student in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics (ACE) who worked on the research for an independent study project, collected and analyzed the women's bookkeeping data to track the economics of using the kit. To learn more about undergraduate student research opportunities, visit the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences website.
The Canadian soy kit costs about $200, but entrepreneurs can assemble a similar kit with locally sourced materials for about $80. The women may already have some of the items, and they can use them for other purposes, adding to the kit's versatility. Even if the women had to take out a small loan to acquire the kit without donor assistance, it would quickly pay off, Goldsmith says.
He and Kim calculated the income generation from the soy kit, estimating gross margins after subtracting production costs such as soybean, water, flavorings, sachets, and plastic bags. There are no capital investments in addition to the kit itself, since the women work from their own home, and the project requires no special storage or cooling facilities. The researchers found gross margins averaged 56%, and implicit wages - a means to estimate the value of labor - equaled $2 per hour.
While that is a significant amount in rural Malawi, it doesn't mean the women can work eight hours a day at this wage. They need to adapt their production level to marketplace demands and time constraints. Still, the soy kit provides a good source of income that aligns with the greater goals of alleviating poverty and malnutrition in Malawi, Goldsmith concludes.
SIL is a USAID-funded initiative comprising an international team of soybean researchers, currently operating at 120 locations in 26 countries.
"We provide technical support to development organizations addressing poverty and malnutrition. We can serve as the technical backstop, helping to determine appropriate ways to solve problems. This is what SIL and the University of Illinois do really well," Goldsmith explains.
He also credits Maggie Mzungu, Charity Kambani, and Elizabeth Venable of the Feed the Future Malawi Agriculture Diversification Activity with helping to roll out the soy kit project and collect data on the ground in Malawi.
INFORMATION:
The Feed the Future Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL) and the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics are housed in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois.
The paper, "The economics of the soy kit as an appropriate household technology for food entrepreneurs" is published in Food and Nutrition Bulletin. Authors are Chungman Kim and Pete Goldsmith. [https://doi.org/10.1177/0379572120981183]
Boulder, Colo., USA: The Paleozoic era culminated 251.9 million years ago in the most severe mass extinction recorded in the geologic record. Known as the "great dying," this event saw the loss of up to 96% of all marine species and around 70% of terrestrial species, including plants and insects.
The consensus view of scientists is that volcanic activity at the end of the Permian period, associated with the Siberian Traps Large Igneous Province, emitted massive quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over a short time interval. This caused a spike in global temperatures and a cascade of other deleterious ...
Keto, gluten-free, organic: If a pet owner is on a specific diet, chances are their dog is on it, too, a new U of G study reveals.
But when it comes to a grain-free diet, owners seem to choose it more for their dogs than themselves, the study also found.
"It demonstrates that many variables, not just dietary habits, influence the selection of dog food," said study lead author Sydney Banton, a master's student in U of G's Department of Animal Biosciences.
The international Pet Food Consumer Habit Survey is the first of its kind to examine factors involved in ...
NEWPORT, Ore. - The population of white sharks that call the Central California coast their primary home is holding steady at about 300 animals and shows some signs of growth, a new long-term study of the species has shown.
Between 2011 and 2018, researchers were able to identify hundreds of individual adult and subadult white sharks, which are not fully mature but are old enough to prey on marine mammals. They used that information to develop estimates of the sharks' abundance.
"The finding, a result of eight years of photographing and identifying individual ...
In new research, Texas A&M University scientists have for the first time revealed a single microscopic defect called a "twin" in a soft-block copolymer using an advanced electron microscopy technique. This defect may be exploited in the future to create materials with novel acoustic and photonic properties.
"This defect is like a black swan -- something special going on that isn't typical," said Dr. Edwin Thomas, professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. "Although we chose a certain polymer for our study, I think the twin defect will be fairly universal across a bunch of similar soft matter systems, like oils, surfactants, biological materials and natural polymers. Therefore, our findings will be valuable to diverse research across the soft matter field."
The ...
Scanning technology aimed at detecting small amounts of nuclear materials was unveiled by scientists in Sweden today, with the hope of preventing acts of nuclear terrorism.
Bo Cederwall, a professor of physics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, says the technology can be used in airports and seaports for routine inspection of passengers and goods. The research is published and featured in the journals Science Advances and Science, respectively.
A form of tomography, the system enables quick 3D imaging of the source of neutron and gamma ray emissions from weapons-grade plutonium and other special nuclear materials, Cederwall says.
The so-called Neutron-Gamma Emission Tomography (NGET) system goes beyond the capabilities of existing radiation portal monitors, ...
Despite expert recommendations that children continue to get regularly scheduled vaccines during the pandemic, vaccination rates have decreased in several states.
A new study by researchers from the Texas A&M University School of Public Health and several other research institutions looked at childhood immunization rates in Texas to see what effect the COVID-19 pandemic may have had on childhood immunizations in 2020. In the study, led by public health doctoral student Tasmiah Nuzhath and published in the journal Vaccine, the researchers used data from a statewide immunization registry ...
May 19, 2021 - For patients with severe arthritis of the ankle, total ankle arthroplasty (TAA) provides better long-term function than ankle arthrodesis (AA), reports a study in The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio in partnership with Wolters Kluwer.
"Both established treatments for end-stage ankle arthritis are effective at pain relief and improved patient-reported outcomes," according to the research by Bruce Sangeorzan MD, and colleagues at the University of Washington and VA Puget Sound Health Care System. "However, it appears TAA leads to greater improvement in most patient-reported outcome measures at 48 months after surgery."
Study adds to evidence supporting TAA for ankle arthritis
End-stage ankle arthritis is characterized ...
The continued growth of wireless and cellular data traffic relies heavily on light waves. Microwave photonics is the field of technology that is dedicated to the distribution and processing of electrical information signals using optical means. Compared with traditional solutions based on electronics alone, microwave photonic systems can handle massive amounts of data. Therefore, microwave photonics has become increasingly important as part of 5G cellular networks and beyond. A primary task of microwave photonics is the realization of narrowband filters: the selection of specific data, at specific frequencies, out of immense volumes that are carried over light.
Many microwave photonic systems are built ...
Scientists at SPECIFIC Innovation and Knowledge Centre, Swansea University, have found a way to replace the toxic, unsustainable solvents currently needed to make the next generation of solar technology.
Printed carbon perovskite solar cells have been described as a likely front runner to the market because they are extremely efficient at converting light to electricity, cheap and easy to make.
A major barrier to the large-scale manufacture and commercialisation of these cells is the solvents used to control crystallisation of the perovskite during fabrication: this is because they are ...
ITHACA, N.Y. - For the first time, Cornell University researchers have developed a technique for studying the neuroscience of motor control in mice ¬- by focusing on a mouse's tongue when it licks a water spout.
The technique incorporates high-speed cameras and machine learning in a tractable experimental setup that opens the door for revealing mysteries of how the motor cortex works, understanding the neural basis of related disorders like Parkinson's disease, and informing robots.
"We now have an approach in a mouse where we can bring all the tools of modern neuroscience to bear on this really classic problem of motor control," said senior author Jesse Goldberg, associate professor of neurobiology and behavior.
The field of motor control neuroscience has made advancements ...
