Development of Experimental Design for the Evaluation of Food Aid Packaging

This paper documents the motivation and methodology developed to evaluate the cost effectiveness and potential improvements for the transportation and storage of food aid commodities. Additionally, preliminary fieldwork conducted to map out the domestic portions of the supply chain is also presented. We hypothesize that modern bag technologies, such as hermetic bags, offer the potential to cost effectively improve the quality of food aid commodities as a substitute to current fumigation processes. A range of packaging (current and new), shipping modes, commodities, and foreign ports will be evaluated in the traditional supply chain with the use of a factorial design. Furthermore, the down-stream supply chain portions such as storage will be simulated by placement in prepositioning warehouses in foreign ports for up to three months. The use of a factorial design with sliding levels is a crucial method utilized to accommodate the various factors involved in the complex supply chain of food aid. Domestic fieldwork has provided valuable insights into the viability of implementing modern bagging technologies in the existing supply chain.