Adjustment Times
Q1: AT Hammer milling: How long does it take from a grain-‐owning customer’s decision to get his grain milled until he finally has it back home?
• It only takes a day. Normally, you just go there, give them the grain and you can take it back 2-‐3 hours later if there are no queues.
Q2: AT Commercial Exports: Is 1 month a suitable approximation for their export sales time (more technical, they might already have decided and planned what to do in case the lobbying for exports ban lifts works out)
• I would estimate that the paperwork takes 2 weeks and the actual logistical process of shipping and selling the maize another 2 week. So, in case that the permit is already there, one can assume that it takes the commercial farmers 2 weeks to export.
Q3: AT FRA exports: How long does it take FRA to export? Currently I am assuming 1 month (again, this concerns more the technical side, assuming that high production was foreseen and exports therefore planned for)
• 1 month seems like a reasonable assumption, as FRA always takes more time for their processes than private actors due to bureaucracy.
Q4: AT miller purchases: How long does it take a miller from the purchase decision to the actual receipt of the maize he needs? Furthermore, considering that they can source from three sources (smallholders, commercial farmers, FRA), is it okay to assume one unified adjustment time for the millers’ purchases, or are the differences too great?
• For commercial and smallholder farmers, it should only take around 1 week, while for FRA it should take longer due to bureaucratic process, around 2 weeks.
Coverage Times
Q5: CT miller grain storage: For how long do millers wish to cover their production with stored grain?
• One month seems like an appropriate assumption, as it strikes a balance between the need to have a certain storage that can guard against demand fluctuations, but also considers the costs of storage.
Q6: CT customer meal storage informal: How long do customers want to store their self-‐milled
meal? Can I assume the same time for self-‐milled and ready-‐made bought meal?
• For customers in the formal, as well as informal value chain you can assume one month’s consumption as desired coverage time. This value is also stable throughout the year.
Demand structure
Q7: Grain vs. readymade meal demand: right now, I am assuming all the rural population prefers (or only has access to) grain instead of readymade meal, and 60% of the rural population. Is this plausible?
• The vast majority of urban consumers prefer the commercial meal. There is a general shift towards processed food. I would estimate that only 15-‐30% of urban population prefers to buy grain instead of roller meal. Furthermore, there is simply often no supply with roller meal in rural areas.
• In rural areas, more or less everyone prefers to buy grain and bring it to the hammer mill herself. Only a small class of wealthy people, mostly civil servants that often journey to the city prefer and have access to roller meal, I would estimate that they only account for 5% of the rural population.
Q8: Price grain-‐to-‐meal relation feedback: I assume that people who purchase grain have very limited budgets, so that they cannot spend more on meal, thus their effective purchase of maize falls by the ratio that meal is more expensive than grain. What do you think about this assumption?
• I think there are two trends: people try to reduce their per capita consumption when they switch to the more expensive commercial roller meal, but they also try to allocate more money to their maize budget to make up for the higher price.
• Furthermore, maize is a priority in their spending, so that they would rather cut other expenses or sell assets rather than reducing their consumption below a certain level where they would start being hungry.
• I would estimate that those consumers who have to change from grain to commercially made meal stretch the amount of maize they would normally consume in 4 weeks to 5 weeks’ consumption.
Q9: Feedback from grain availability to grain demand: do you agree that people progressively lower their demand towards the minimum, as grain gets scarcer?
• Yes, I agree with that idea. However, there is a certain minimum daily consumption that people would do almost anything to not fall below.
FRA structure
Q10: Is the assumption about the cascade of maize storage suitable? (I.e. that FRA first buys maize in the slabs, then transports it to silos, fills these up until they are full and then fills up the sheds. Only when these are also full, they leave maize in the slabs)
• Yes, this assumption is plausible.
Q11: AT moving FRA maize to built facilities: how long does it take to move maize from the collection points (very basic open sheds or just slabs, I assume) to the silos or more elaborate sheds?
• Moving maize from the slabs to the permanent storage (sheds or silos) should not take more than 3 days, as FRA has contractors doing that for them so that we assume the following distribution: 1 day for getting the maize from the slab, 1 days for transporting it and 1 day for offloading it to the permanent depot.
Q12: FRA Selling season: Does FRA only sell in a certain season, or can millers buy from them throughout the year?
• Sales can happen any time throughout the year.
• When FRA gets indications from the CFS that the next harvest will be good, they start offloading their old security stocks. They get the results from the CFS around February/March.
Switches
Q13: Commercial farmers export switch: does the logic behind switch the structure make sense?
• It seems plausible. After the main harvest comes in, the government becomes willing to lift the export ban when they see that enough smallholder harvest was good enough to sustain domestic demand.
Q14: Non-‐FRA smallholder sales switch: does the logic behind this structure largely conform to reality?
• Non-‐FRA smallholder sales channels are in principal open all the time, but farmers are strategic and reserve their stocks so that they can sell to FRA later, since they
want to profit from their higher prices. The structure thus seems plausible as it represents the smallholder farmers’ strategic sales behaviour.
Other Concerns
Q15: I am assuming that millers prefer to buy from commercial farmers, then smallholders (although this never really conflicts due to seasonality), and as a last resort from FRA. Is this plausible?
• This seems reasonable, as it reflects that millers usually prefer to buy from farmers because they sell faster and often at lower prices.
Q16: I am assuming that commercial farmers do not engage in any meaningful “green harvest”, is that plausible?
• This assumption seems plausible.
Q17: Is milling capacity ever a problem for commercial millers? I.e. has it ever occurred that they cannot satisfy the demand of their customers? Currently, demand goes as high as ca. 100.000 mt/month in milling, and I assume they can always satisfy it. Is that plausible?
• Commercial millers have never proved to be a bottleneck in the production system. 100.000 MT per month seems to be well possible. The assumption thus appears reasonable.
Q18: Have any other bottlenecks in the maize distribution system been observed (e.g. in retailing, hammer milling, storage of any actor)? If yes, what is their nature?
• I have not observed any bottleneck in the maize marketing system that has not yet been represented in the model so far.