Food Processing Toolkit for Rural and Urban Poor

 

A team of FAO and UNIDO experts has just published a Food Processing Toolkit CD that is available for just the cost of the postage. The CD was produced in the context of a UNIDO-FAO project in the Thi-Qar Governorate in Southern Iraq for the rural and urban poor. The Toolkit and will be part of the programme offered at the vocational training centre the project has rehabilitated in the city of Naasiriyah, the capital of the governorate, and the new one it has established in the city of Al-Qorna.

The CD is a collection of toolkits covering: cereals, fruit, honey, meat, milk, oil, roots, spices, sugar and vegetables. It is designed for entrepreneurs from developing countries who are looking for ideas and guidance to develop food-processing industries. The toolkits are also accessible online at the INPhO site.

Each toolkit contains information on the raw material, physical layout, basic services, equipment and equipment suppliers for a variety of processes. The Cereals Toolkit, for example, covers the process for lactic fermentation, breads, noodles, cakes / biscuits, cornmeal / masa, cornmeal tortilla / tortilla chips. Each toolkit gives a concise technical overview that should provide the basis for developing a "bankable" agro-processing proposal for submission to a bank or other financing institutions.

The CD includes the INPhO decision-making software Mini-Agriventure (available for downloading from the FAO site), a user friendly, basic platform for preliminary evaluations and rapid screening of alternative agro-industrial investments. To facilitate the use of Mini-Agriventure, the CD includes technical coefficients of selected projects, so that users can estimate the coefficients they have to employ in the preparation of data for their own projects.

The full version of the software, Agriventure (also available for downloading from the FAO site), guides users through the entire process of data entry and analyses required in the formulation of an agro-industrial investment project. Agriventure follows both intermediate and final stages in the computation of raw material and input needs, product cost estimates, revenues, fixed and working capital requirements, financing schemes and all other details required for a comprehensive assessment of the financial feasibility of a project.

The Food Processing Toolkits will be continuously updated. Contributions are invited from other institutions so that they can expand more rapidly, covering a wider range of products and processes. The main purpose of this toolkit was to bring together all pieces of relevant information in a single package that is informative and easy to use.

INPhO, FAO's Information Network on Post-Harvest Operations was developed by FAO with the support and collaboration of the German development agency GTZ and CIRAD, the French organization that undertakes agricultural research for developing countries.

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