Super Bags to thwart rice wastage now available to Filipino farmers

Seed Daily via SPX: An airtight, reusable plastic bag that protects stored rice from moisture, pests, and rats, and keeps rice seeds viable, is now available to Filipino farmers in almost 200 retail stores nationwide. IRRI Super Bags reduce losses incurred after harvest that usually stem from poor storage conditions - helping prevent physical postharvest losses that can be around 15%. On top of these losses, farmers also experience loss in quality.

Developed by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)'s postharvest experts in collaboration with GrainPro Inc., the IRRI Super Bag is meant for small-scale rice farmers to protect the viability and quality of rice stored in their homes.

The IRRI Super Bag is manufactured by GrainPro Inc. and is marketed as SuperGrainbag. IRRI, through its national partnerships, has verified the benefits of the IRRI Super Bag with tens of thousands of farmers throughout Asia, but acknowledges it is a challenge to bring the bags to millions of farmers in a commercial way.

Philippine farmer Manuel Luzentales Jr. has always wondered how to deal with rats and weevils gnawing their way into his paddy (unmilled rice) stored in ordinary sacks in his house. After attending a seminar in a nearby town introducing the IRRI Super Bags to farmers in the Philippine Bicol region, he decided to test them.

"Before, a 7-month storage caused my rice grains to break from moisture and pest infestations," Luzentales recalls. "I tested the IRRI Super Bags on my harvest for the second planting season of 2010. After keeping my harvest in the IRRI Super Bags for 10 months, the seeds were 100% viable, and none were wasted."...

Rice farmers at work in the Philippines, from IRRI Images, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license