Mini Silos: Enhancing Smallholders' Grain Storage, Improving Food Safety and Reducing Loss

Smallholders store about 50% of the total grain produced in China yet their stock has tended to suffer from damage caused by culprits such as rodents, insects, and mould as a result of inadequate facilities, resulting in great loss. Poor grain storage conditions and limited use of good-quality equipment have also tended to cause a serious reduction in grain quality and even various types of exposure to pesticide and chemical fertiliser, posing a serious risk to grain quality and food safety.

The government of Kaihua County, Quzhou City, Zhejiang Province, has promoted the use of customised painted steel mini silos in order to address the situation. Top, middle, and bottom segments 118 cm in diameter and less than half a metre high can be assembled into a standardised grain storage device approximately 146 cm high, forming up to 1.6 cu. m of storage capacity, which is enough for around 1,000 kg of rice. The bottom segment of the silo features an air-tight valve that grain freely flows from when it is opened as well as a ventilator, and segments can be combined in different ways if desired.

Central government investment subsidies cover about 30% of the cost of every mini silo, financial support provided by provincial governments accounts for a minimum of 30%, and counties and the smallholders who live in them cover the remaining 40%. In Kaihua, the central government and provincial government each cover RMB150 of a RMB468 mini silo, and the local government provides RMB100 of funding, resulting in a net cost of just RMB68 for the people who use them.

The ability of mini silos to effectively isolate grain from rats, mould, and other undesirable elements; their sturdy, aesthetically pleasing, corrosion-resistant bodies with long service lives; and the fact that they can be easily assembled, disassembled, and transported and their capacities can be adjusted have made them very popular with smallholders. China’s National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration has built a total of 8.92 million standardised silos for smallholders in 26 provinces as of spring 2021, and nearly 10 million exist when those built by local governments and purchased by smallholders outright are taken into account, which has resulted in food safety improving and post-harvest grain storage loss decreasing from 8% to 2% at the farms where they are used.