Mike Jones, Corinne Alexander, and Jess Lowenberg-DeBoer

 A. obtectus,  Z. subfasciatus  Cowpea bruchids  Without grain protection, six month dry weight losses of 10-40% are common  Kiula and Karel (1985)  How does this affect marketing producers wishing to store? Source: (top) ethz.ch, (bottom) infonet-biovision.org,

 What economic benefit of PICS technology could exist for marketing common bean producers?  How would the profitability of common bean storage with PICS compare to other current methods?

 Songa and Rono (1998)  *Chemicals: Ex. Actellic Super  *Solar Disinfestation: “Sunning and Sieving” (weekly)  Paul et al. (2009)  *Botanicals  A. indica  C. Ambrosioides  Dichotomous Earth: Keep Dry®  Ash: S. and R. (1998) found much less effective  *Hermetic?  Compare to cowpea losses until PICS data available, cite cowpea losses used in Moussa (2005)

 (Weakly) link DWL to % Damaged through Mulungu (2006)  Common bean price discounts from Mishili et al. (2011) in Tanzania  A 2.3% price discount was found for every bruchid hole in 100 grain sample  Revenue Loss derived MOSTLY from quality loss and price discounts DWL (%) % Beans Damaged* % Revenue Loss *Conservative assumption of one hole per bean

Source: FEWSNET

Percent Price Increase for High/Low Price Months for Common Beans in Select East African Countries TanzaniaKenyaUganda Arusha17.4%Kitui16.8% Lira31.2% Dar es Salaam 21.1%Nairobi20.1% Dodoma33.3% El Doret27.5%Gulu68.4% Mbeya39.1% Songea46.1% Kisimu33.5%Kampala100% Kigoma58.7% Source: FEWSNET (five-year average [nominal] monthly prices)

Opportunity Cost of Capital (OCC)

 Largest common bean producing country in East Africa  Focus on (green) production areas  Kigoma  Mbeya  Songea  Arusha

 Following losses from Songa and Rono (1998), PICS should be competitive with chemical and solar methods.  Use of bag for second year is important

 Need to incorporate incoming PICS data from current trials- Help link science and economics!  Dry weight loss  Holes in 100 grains/ % Beans Damaged  Quality is import and probably varies by region  Room for economic research in price discounts  Understand greater impact of Opportunity Cost and credit constraints  Will surely affect adoption for high-value beans  Price seasonality must compensate!