Unique Milk Cooler to Boost Ugandan Dairy Farmers  - PART 2 of 5 | Voice of America - English
/*-->*/  /*-->*/  /*-->*/ The World Bank is to fund a project it thinks can significantly improve the lives of Uganda's many small-scale dairy farmers. Most of them don't have electricity, so they can't cool their milk. Much of it goes bad, resulting in huge losses for the farmers. But an engineer from the East African country, William Kisaalita, has developed a unique system, using renewable energy, that allows the farmers to keep their milk cold. Then they can transport it to sell it in distant markets ? and boost their profits.
The Ugandan governmentestimates that there are 2.5 million smallholder dairy farms in the country, providingthree-quarters of the local milk market. But small-scale dairy farmers inUganda and other developing countries face major obstacles. "These farmers can't refrigerate their milk because theydon't have electricity, and they're too poor to afford kerosene fridges," saysKisaalita, who's a graduate of Uganda's Makerere University and currently aprofessor of biological and agricultural engineering at the University ofGeorgia in the United States. He explains that the farmers milk their cows twice a day,in the morning and in the evening. "The milk in the morning finds its way either through theinformal or the formal markets. In the day, it's easy to transport. But the eveningmilk doesn't (get to the markets)," because it can't be cooled to enable it tobe transported overnight to ready markets that are further away. "(The milk is then) used in low-value products,like?cooking fat, which takes away a lot of the money from the pockets of thefarmers. So there is a need to find a way that that milk can be cooled so thatit can either enter the formal or the informal market, where it can fetch areal good value for the farmers," says Kisaalita, who adds, "When I saw thatthe farmers were losing up to half of their milk output, I started searchingfor a solution" in order to boost farmers' profits and increase food productionin Uganda. He says he found an answer in the form of a beer cooleroriginally developed in Germany. The professor reengineeredthe CoolSystem beer cooler, which was manufactured to meet the needs ofaffluent beer drinkers in Europe and Asia, and adapted it to the needs ofsmallholder dairy farmers in his home country. Kisaalita tells VOA his remodeled cooler uses a mineralcalled zeolite ? a natural, volcanic, rock-like substance with a "micro-porousstructure" that's mined in various parts of the world, including the UnitedStates. Zeolite has a remarkable capacity to absorb water. Kisaalita explains, "The idea is that you?expose wateradjacent to the container containing milk to (a) low vacuum, through a valve,and because of that, the water vaporizes. When the water vaporizes it (removes)the heat from the milk. Then you have the zeolite absorbing the water vapor, sothat the vacuum and the vaporization continue. The principle is what is verywell known as evaporative cooling. But this?has been configured so that we canachieve very high temperature drops, or temperature cooling." He explains that the system has to be regenerated toenable it to cool the milk repeatedly. "The way this product is configured is that if you gothrough a cooling cycle, you can't cool again, because the zeolite I talkedabout would be full of water," Kisaalita comments. "So the system has to beregenerated, and the way it's regenerated is by heating the zeolite, so thatthe zeolite can lose the water." Kisaalita continues that this essential regeneration willhappen by means of renewable energy. "We're looking at?either using charcoal or biogas. We'releaning towards biogas, as the waste from cattle will be (readily) available topower the cooler." Biogas is produced as aresult of the biological breakdown of organic matter. It originates frombiogenic material and is a type of biofuel. A type of biogas is produced bywhat Kisaalita calls "fermentation of biodegradable materials, such as manure."He says this type of biogas consists mostly of methane and carbon dioxide. Kisaalita credits his students with helping him find whathe hopes will be a solution to smallholder farmers' milk cooling predicament. He says, "Since 2001 I've run two programs that linkstudents in Uganda to students in Georgia and vice versa. These programs areactually the ones that delivered results in terms of the project. We addressproblems that smallholder farmers have that require engineering solutions.Every (US) summer, we go with these students and spend eight weeks on theground in Uganda ? either researching the problem or implementing solutions." Now that Kisaalita's secured some funding for hisproject, he says his next step will be to identify an initial 50 farmers in arural area of southwestern Uganda, about 20 miles from the city of Mbarara, asthe first beneficiaries of his milk cooling system. "There are a lot of cows in the area and the people seemto be open-minded as to adapting to new technology. Most of them aresmallholder farmers, and we are interested in this type of farmers," he says."We are not so interested in the bigger farmers, because most of them haveelectricity, (although) in the long run we think they may also benefit fromthis because one can foresee a business model where these larger farmersactually increase their productivity by buying (milk) from the smaller farmerswho'll be using the product." Kisaalita says the first 50 farmers will each own aboutsix cows. "This is the best capacity for the product. We willprovide each of them with a cooler. As they produce, as they cool milk and addto their overall productivity ? initially we will take a fraction of that milk,so that will serve as payback. They'll be paying back the unit as we go along,"he states. Kisaalita anticipates that the farmers will have paid offthe cost of the units after about six to nine months of operation, after whichthey'll own the coolers. Heestimates that the price of each cooler will be "anywhere between $600 and$800. This may sound a lot for smallholder farmers, but our economiccalculations suggest that if a large fraction of the extra milk produced isused as pay back, these farmers can pay for the unit in approximately ninemonths." Kisaalita says that if the first batch of farmers insouthwestern Uganda "totally embrace" the new milk coolers, as expected, thenew technology will be distributed among dairy farmers throughout the country,and then possibly to "nine other countries that we've identified that havesimilar milk market conditions" ? including regional neighbors Kenya andTanzania, but also as far away as Mozambique and Madagascar. He maintains that interest in his cooler is "building" inother parts of the world. "There are a number of other countries outsidesub-Saharan Africa that have similar (milk cooling) problems. So there is thissense that if we succeed in sub-Saharan Africa, there will be others ? likeVietnam or Colombia ? that would be interested in the product." The engineer says the cooler is appreciated for itspotential to allow smallholder dairy farmers to provide produce to exportmarkets. Kisaalita explains, "For milk to meet internationalstandards, it has to be cooled to four degrees Celsius, within four hours ofmilking. If you're going to export any milk product, this is the standardthat's required. Having very little milk that meets this requirement means thatthe chances for export are limited. The country cannot earn foreign exchangefrom the milk." He hopes his cooler will ease this crisis. Kisaalita says another advantage of his system is its"versatility" and the fact that in remote