GrainMate Grain Moisture Meter

GrainMate - an easy-to-use grain moisture meter - helps farmers detect moisture levels in grains in order to determine if they are dry enough for harvest, storage or sale.

Winner 2019
Food Security Ghana, Rwanda, Zimbabwe
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Key Facts

  • According to the FAO, over 30% of grains produced in Africa are lost to post-harvest losses.
  • One factor that contributes to such high losses includes high moisture content in grains.
  • With GrainMate, farmers insert the attached probe into a bag of grain, select the grain type and read the moisture content off an LCD screen.
  • Farmers compare the reading with an attached chart to know whether the grain is dry enough for storage.
  • GrainMate costs four times less than similar solutions.
GrainMate is used onsite and can quickly provide a moisture content reading.

Key Features

GrainMate is a simple-to-use grain moisture meter that helps farmers easily measure the moisture content in their grains before and during storage.  With GrainMate, farmers can accurately tell whether their grains are dry enough for harvest, storage or sale.

It consists of two parts: a hand-held reader and a metal probe. To measure the moisture content, all farmers have to do is insert the attached probe into a bag of grain, select the grain type and read the moisture content off an LCD screen.

They then compare the reading with an attached chart to know whether the grain is dry enough for storage.

GrainMate has several unique advantages over similar solutions on the market. It costs four times less than similar solutions, making it more affordable for smallholder farmers. It is designed to be very simple to use, ideal for farmers who have limited education.

Another innovation lies in our business model: smallholder farmers are able to access GrainMate as part of a bundle of other post-harvest management services we offer and have the option to pay by barter through grain produce, thereby eliminating the cash barriers farmers face when trying to access critical post-harvest technologies.

Social Impact

According to the FAO, over 30% of grains produced in Africa are lost to post-harvest losses with 150 million smallholder farmer families being the worst impacted, producing 80% of food grown on the continent yet earning little for their toil, often having little to live on.

One factor that contributes to such high losses includes high moisture content in grains. By knowing the moisture content in their grains, farmers can know whether their grains are dry enough for storage or have to be dried some more.

However, existing solutions to measure the moisture content in grains are either expensive or inaccessible, leaving farmers to resort to traditional ways of testing moisture content such as biting or tossing grains. For fear of losses, farmers usually have to sell their grains during the harvest season at cheap prices and lose out on profits they could have obtained if they had stored for longer.

Our GrainMate Moisture Meter provides a low-cost solution for farmers to measure the moisture content in their grains. We recognize that post-harvest losses also go beyond just measuring for moisture so we have combined GrainMate with a suite of post-harvest services to provide a holistic post-harvest management solution for farmers.

Today, more than 1,000 farmers in Ghana are getting access to GrainMate alongside drying, storage, threshing and market access services which has resulted in significant reduction in losses and an estimated 20% increase in revenue among 150 smallholder families so far.

Future Plans

Sesi Technologies is looking to scale the GrainMate Moisture Meter both within Ghana and also across sub-Saharan Africa through distribution partnerships this year.

The company also plans to launch our new FarmerPack service tailored to smallholder farmers where they will receive a suite of critical post-harvest management solutions to reduce losses and increase their incomes.

Additionally, the team is in the process of developing other technologies including a low-cost soil testing solution and a solution featuring recommendations to help farmers increase productivity.

Main Target Group

Commercial farmers, grain aggregators, feed producers, donor organizations, food processing companies.

Main User

Smallholder farmers, commercial farmers, grain aggregators, feed producers.

© Sesi Technologies
© Sesi Technologies
© Sesi Technologies
© Sesi Technologies
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