Impact of Food Granaries

Impact of Food Granaries

Introduction

Food storage is a vital component in the economic and social package that comprises the Neolithic, contributing to plant domestication, increasingly sedentary lifestyles, and new social organizations. Recent excavations at Dhra' near the Dead Sea in Jordan provide strong evidence for sophisticated, purpose-built granaries in a predomestication context 11,300-11,175 cal B.P., which support recent arguments for the deliberate cultivation of wild cereals at this time. Designed with suspended floors for air circulation and protection from rodents, they are located between residential structures that contain plant-processing instillations. The granaries represent a critical evolutionary shift in the relationship between people and plant foods, which precedes the emergence of domestication and large-scale sedentary communities by at least 1,000 years.

Discussion

For many years, the granary was a key component of the homestead in many parts of Africa and India. "It was an important yardstick - the measure of one's strength and wealth.

A full granary portrayed hard work and foresight, while an empty one reflected laziness," says Charles Ocen in Ngetta, Lira. But, with the current climate change and unpredictable weather, resulting in famine and a sharp rise in food prices, the question on people's minds is: "What happened to the granary?" When he had just come to power, President Yoweri Museveni talked about the traditional granary (ekyaagi) as the best way to address poverty and hunger.

A traditional granary is a round-shaped structure of about 8ft circumference, usually raised at least 3ft above the ground. It is constructed using local material such as mud and wattle and plastered with a layer of cow dung to fill up holes and smoothen the finishing. Nelson Ojur, a farmer and elder in Loro, Lira district, says the plaster also prevents animals from accessing the food and water from damaging the food.

A traditional average size granary can store at least one tonne of cereals for a long time. For example, millet can be stored in a granary for over four years. If people still respected the granary, the impact of the flooding and hunger would not have been as devastating. "If we had granaries as it used to be, we would not have a food shortage,"says Robert Engulu, the Kaberamaido LC5 chairman.

Granaries have slowly died out due to the introduction of modern food storage facilities. Some people resorted to keeping their food inside their houses for fear of thieves.

Some people stopped storing food two years ago, after floods destroyed their produce. The granary has also slowly phased out because people are no longer able to produce enough food for daily consumption, sale or for storage. People either eat everything they produce or sell it.

A few years ago, organisations introduced cereal cribs. These are much larger, with many of them having a capacity of over a tonne. But unlike traditional granaries, cribs are more difficult to construct. They are mainly constructed with wood and roofed with iron sheets or papyrus and placed at least two feet off the ...