Agricultural Processing
About 30% of global energy is consumed by the agricultural and food sector. Primary agricultural consumes only about 20%, whilst food processing including transport uses around 40% and thereby significantly contributes to global energy consumption along agricultural value chains. Food processing techniques can increase the market value of a good, its storage life and its nutritional value and can consume significant amounts of energy. Processing of food includes the transformation of basic materials into food, for example wheat into flour and flour into bread or the production of palm oil out of raw material, which can then be used for cooking. By processing, food can be turned into other, easier digestible forms of food, for example through cooking. In Africa, over 60% of the energy inputs in the food supply chain are used for cooking. Furthermore, food is processed in order to preserve it. Preservation techniques can be drying, sugaring, curing, cooling and freezing, heating, smoking, canning or bottling. These methods prove to be possibly energy-consuming as well: According to the FAO, tobacco curing accounted for over half the total on-farm energy demand in Zimbabwe in 1995.
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