[Stoves] Designing for the affluent AND the poor.... this is NOT Re: ocean acidification

rongretlarson at comcast.net rongretlarson at comcast.net
Sun Jul 7 21:59:39 CDT 2013 


Cecil and list 



    Thanks for more info in this and previous note.    I admire the work of anthropologists in understanding cultures.  But not su re they are any better than any other group in projecting the future about any technolgy on which they are not expert.   Disagree? 



Two follow-ups: 



    1.  I searched unsuccessfully for some time on both the GACC and WorldBank sites for a copy of the (any) stove  questionnaire.  Can you or anyone send a cite or an electronic version of anything current from these or any similar group? 



    2.  When I used the term "making money" - that was shorthand for asking about TLUD stove preferences.  I am wondering if you or anyone is asking questions such as this: 

     "Would you be interested in a stove that is cleaner, can be set to a given power level, will save on fire-tending time, and can make charcoal for sale - perhaps $100 per year?"  

            This of course should have another such as:   

     "The above stove can only be operated in a batch mode with special fuels  - how serious would these problems b e? 



Ron 


----- Original Message -----


From: "Cecil Cook" <cec1863 at gmail.com> 
To: "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org> 
Cc: "Steve Taylor" <steveastrouk at gmail.com> 
Sent: Monday, July 8, 2013 12:41:08 AM 
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Designing for the affluent AND the poor.... this is NOT Re: ocean acidification 


Continuing my contribution:  


Interestingly, with the arrival of electricity in most villages and the governments roll out of 55 million free LPG stove/3 kg canister kits several remarkable changes in rural kitchens are taking place: 



(i.)  better off families are buying electric rice steamers which they uses regularly thereby reducing the household cooking load by about 25%; 
(ii.) making limited use of the LPG stove (some families use less than 3 kg of LPG a month) for quick cooking tasks such as reheating cold food, quick frying tofu and tempe, heating small amounts of water for tea, stir frying veggies, etc. The average use of LPG is about 6kg per month which only costs $.50 a kg because the government subsidizes the cost by +/- $.50 per kg.  The point is that households minimize their expenditure for LPG by deciding what stove work tasks they perform using free biomass and what tasks they perform using subsidized electricity and LPG. 
(iii.) heavy stove work tasks like boiling 20 litres of palm nectar down to 2 kgs of sugar which can take up to 3 hours is done using the traditional high powered stove fueled by free (collected) biomass   
(iv.) the introduction of the electric rice cooker and the LPG stove has made it possible for rural families to separate between the dirty part of the kitchen where the big pots and woks used for home industries are soot covered and a clean section or corner of the kitchen organized around the LPG stove and rice cooker where the pots are all scrubbed clean. 


What I observed in Yogyakarta Province is that the percentage of stove work performed using biomass decreases as one moves from deep rural areas into the peri-rural towns and peri-urban zones.  Households adjust their stoves and energy carriers to their income, kitchen sizes, and the availability of free biomass fuel.    


The World Bank is now carrying out a many paged questionnaire to attempt to differentiate the geographical zones and economic levels of the biomass economy in Yogyakarta.  It turns out to be very complex.  Strangely, urban families who no longer cook with biomass in their small urban kitchens, continue to eat traditional foods prepared with biomass because there are thousands of small vendors of traditional and regional foods available nearby or on their doorsteps. A significant percentage of the biomass economy has moved out of the small urban kitchen and has been taken over by small vendors and restaurants in the street.  In Yogyakarta there is a food vendor every 50 meters of urban corridor.   


The complexity of the provincial biomass economy is caused by the fact that there are about 10 different major biomass stove using constituencies which expect their stoves to perform specific functions well.  Some food vendors use charcoal, firewood, LPG and electricity cooking technologies and energy carriers to prepare food for sale to customers.   


In Indonesia with its 250 000 000 people and +/- 65 million households, I estimate there are more than 100 million biomass stoves in use.  These 100 million biomass stoves are divided up among farming households who mainly use them for household cooking and ceremonial functions, households that use stoves to process crops and generate revenue, peri-rural/peri-urban (intermediate) households which use biomass to minimize expenditure on LPG, food vendors in all zones who prepare large volumes of food for sale, urban households that have converted entirely to a clean kitchen using electricity and LPG that still buys traditional foods from street vendors and small restaurants. Each of these different stove use constituency has its own preferences in terms of what stove work functions it prioritizes.  In such a potentially enormous biomass stove market as Indonesia, it will be necessary for designer, producers and marketers to target specific stove using communities.  We need to first understand what stove work functions they use their stoves to perform and once we know how well their traditional stoves perform these functions we can begin to design and produce stoves that out perform the baseline stove technologies.  


Hope these remarks do not give you a headache. Anthropologists have a bad reputation because we tend to make solutions that work for the people more complex and difficult to deliver.  It turns out that reality is normally more complex than we want it to be.  


In service, 


Cecil 


In service, 



On Sun, Jul 7, 2013 at 5:47 PM, Cecil Cook < cec1863 at gmail.com > wrote: 



Dear stovers,    


Ron asks:  


Kevin mention's Cecil Cook doing interviews on consumer stove preferences. Anyone know if making money while cooking was a stove-user question that Cecil asked? 


The World Bank is currently conducting a many paged questionnaire to identify the full spectrum of stove use and stove work functions in a range of different stove use constituencies. My fieldwork in agricultural villages in Yogyakarta and Central Java clearly indicated that traditional self constructed multi-pothole stoves are used for the following functions:  


    1. household cooking and water heating (for bathing and pasteurization) (2 pots cooking/heating  at the same time) ,  
    2. income generation (making palm sugar, frying chips, crackers and other snack foods for sale),  
    3. drying crops such as corn, peanuts, root crops, herbs for home use and sale on racks above the stove,  
    4. space heating in households that are more than 500 meter ASL,  
    5. drying damp firewood and clothes during the rainy season, 
    6. cooking large quantities of food to feed the extended family (woks/pots with 10 to 20 litres of water to boil meat, cook rice, cook soups and vegetables) at wedding, funerals (7 observances over 3 years), and village gatherings (the stove needs to be big enough to deliver 10 to 15 kW of power to the pot), 
    7. creating a social hearth or focus for the household including emitting enough flickering light to cook by 

So the traditional stove is versatile multi-functional 'workhorse'.    


Interestingly, with the arrival of electricity in most villages and the governments roll out of 55 million free LPG stove/3 kg canister kits several remarkable changes in rural kitchens are taking place:  



(i.) 





On Sun, Jul 7, 2013 at 11:36 AM, < rongretlarson at comcast.net > wrote: 

<blockquote>


Kevin,  Paul, Steve,  AD,  List etal 

1.    I concur with Steve Taylor re congratulating AD (in message just received in this thread) for wisdom on developing country desires to emulate developed countries on consumer products.  I believe we can go further and say this applies to incomes. 

2.  Mainly  I write to note that Kevin (appropriately) places making money first on the producer side of the seller-buyer lists.  But it appears nowhere on Kevin's list for the buyer side - even though about half of the messages on this list relate to TLUDs, with all TLUD purveyors well aware that charcoal can be sold by TLUD stove  users.  Both of Kevin's lists are below 

3.  Kevin mention's Cecil Cook doing interviews on consumer stove preferences. Anyone know if making money while cooking was a stove-user question that Cecil asked? 

Ron 

From: "Kevin" < kchisholm at ca.inter.net > 
To: "Paul Anderson" < psanders at ilstu.edu >, "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" < stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org > 
Sent: Sunday, July 7, 2013 2:27:19 AM 


Subject: Re: [Stoves] Designing for the affluent AND the poor.... this is        NOT Re: ocean acidification 

Dear Paul 
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul Anderson" < psanders at ilstu.edu > 
To: "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" < stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org > 
Cc: "Kevin" < kchisholm at ca.inter.net > 
Sent: Saturday, July 06, 2013 4:26 PM 
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Designing for the affluent AND the poor.... this is 
NOT Re: ocean acidification 


Kevin and all, 

> 
> Should it [Stoves List discussion] be driven by "Producer Push" or 
> "Customer Pull"? 
Considering that "customers" (local people in poverty, not NGOs) are so 
few on this Listserv, the very worthy attention to "Customer Pull" is 
likely to be viewed through the eyes of the "Producers". 

# An astute Producer will find out what the Customer REALLY wants, and will 
configure his Product Offering  to meet the wants to the greatest extent 
possible. Stove design involves compromises, and the trick is to get as many 
of the wanted features as is possible, without building in "unwanted 
features", such as "too costly", "too flimsy", "unacceptably ugly", too 
unsafe", etc. 

I think that Producer Push is not as bad as it is thought to be, at 
least not when by Producers who have substantial overseas experience and 
are not driven by the monetary reward. 

# "Prioducer Push" can be both "good" and "bad". It is "good" if the 
producer aagressively and effectively promotes a product that accurately 
addresses the Customer Wants. It is "bad" when the Producer incorporates 
features that are now wanted by the Customer. 

Example:  When the target Customers are quite unaware of some advances 
that could be beneficial to them, there is zero "pull". And any attempts 
to inform them of such advances would certainly be a form of Producer 
Push or Push from Outside of their societies. 

# This is where work of the calibre being done by Cecil is so important. He 
sets out to identify the features of a stove that are REALLY important to 
the customer. Then, a Stove Producer can configure a Stove Product that best 
meets the "Customer Wants". This is where the Stove producer can shine, with 
new technology, better materials, better design, etc. 

# The 'Policy People" at "Head Office" may want to Customer to buy a stove 
that reduces "Ocean Acidification", or "Improves climate Conditions", or 
"Produces Char", but if the Customer does not want these features, the stove 
will not sell. Clearly, with so many potential Customers out there, some 
will want these features, and will be willing to pay for them. While most 
people buy bicycles, there is still a market for unicycles, but it is a 
small percentage of the bicycle market. This is where "Producer Push" can go 
wrong. 

Best wishes, 

Kevin 

Paul 

Paul S. Anderson, PhD  aka "Dr TLUD" 
Email:   psanders at ilstu.edu   Skype: paultlud  Phone: +1-309-452-7072 
Website:   www.drtlud.com 

On 7/6/2013 8:41 AM, Kevin wrote: 
> Dear Paul 
> 
> This is the STOVES list. 
> 
> Should it be driven by "Producer Push" or "Customer Pull"? 
> 
> I would suggest the Stoves List should be driven by "Customer Pull." 
> 
> The Boy Scout who helps the proverbial "Little Old Lady" across the street 
> does a good deed only when the Little Old Lady" wanted to go across the 
> street. 
> 
> In my opinion, the Stoves List should focus on providing Stove Customers 
> with what they want. 
> 
> Just what do "Stove Customers" want? 
> 
> There are many facets to "Stoves". There is no such thing as "THE perfect 
> stove", but there are as many "perfect stoves" as there are stoves that 
> perfectly meet the wants and needs of the Stove Customer. 
> 
> Some factors that may be of importance to Stove Customers are: 
> * Initial cost 
> * Portability 
> * Appearance 
> * Cooking capability 
> * Space heating capability 
> * Fuel efficiency 
> * Durability 
> * Visual access to flame 
> * Pride of ownership 
> * Cleanliness 
> * Safety 
> * Smoke free living space 
> * Particulate free living space 
> * Etc. 
> 
> There are MANY more factors of importance to the Stove Customer. There are 
> MANY, MANY combinations of factors that are of importance to Stove 
> Customers. 
> 
> Stove Producers produce stoves for many different motivations. Some 
> motivations or "drivers" include: 
> * To make money 
> * To feel good 
> * To do good 
> * To create a market for a particular fuel or technology 
> * To create an economic base for community development 
> * To address a health concern 
> * To address an Environmental Concern 
> * To further another Agenda 
> * Etc. 
> 
> To the extent that the interests of the Customer and the Producer overlap, 
> their mutual interests will be served. 
> 
> Perhaps there should also be a "Stoves Policy List", where the interests 
> and agendas of Stove Promoters and Producers were discussed, and perhaps 
> the "Stoves List" should focus more on the interests of the Stove 
> Customers? 
> 
> What do you think? 
> 
> Best wishes, 
> 
> Kevin 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Anderson" < psanders at ilstu.edu > 
> To: "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" 
> < stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org > 
> Sent: Saturday, July 06, 2013 1:54 AM 
> Subject: [Stoves] Designing for the affluent AND the poor.... this is NOT 
> Re: ocean acidification 
> 
> 
> Thank you Richard and Andrew, 
> 
> I agree with your comments below EXCEPT that you did not change the 
> Subject line.   And therefore List readers who are fed up with the 
> oceanic acidity discussion are unlikely to have read your comments.  By 
> the way, I did NOT read those messages.   But I do read whatever Andrew 
> and Richard contribute to the Listserv. 
> 
> Now, about designs for the affluent AND the poor.   This relates to 
> "trickle down technology" that believes that by helping the rich, the 
> poor will benefit.....  EVENTUALLY benefit.   Sure.   a few years or 
> decades or lifetimes later. 
> 
> I am glad that affluent societies financially supported cell/mobile 
> phone development.  A great example of trickle down technology coming 
> rather quickly.   But it reached the poor societies because business 
> found that it could make money off of the needs of poor people to also 
> communicate.   And microchips etc are really inexpensive.   We are 
> unlikely to see similar benefits relating to cookstoves. 
> 
> Even as it is today, MUCH of stove work/efforts are targeted to the more 
> affluent of the poor, those who are in the upper parts of the BASE of 
> the pyramid (BOP).   That makes more sense than trying to get biomass 
> fuel stoves into typical American and European households.   But that 
> approach (well established and supported by the GACC and the World Bank 
> ACESS programs) still leaves a massive lack of attention to the needs of 
> the true base of the BOP.   But at least the distance to trickle down 
> from the upper BOP to the lower BOP is less (and should be faster) than 
> trickle down from the Top of the Pyramid to be base of the BOP. 
> 
> If you decide to reply to this Thread of messages, please stick to this 
> topic.   (Or change the Subject line to reflect what you are actually 
> talking about.   After all, the Subject line has at least two 
> purposes:   One is to continue the Thread, and the other is to inform 
> the reader what is the actual subject being discussed.) 
> 
> Paul      with 4 more days in Uganda, then I bring home over 300 pounds 
> of stove progress (available baggage allowance for 3 people) to show at 
> Stove Camps and biochar meetings in late July, early Sept and mid 
> October in Oregon, Tennessee, and Massachusetts, respectively.   I hope 
> to see many of you as I cross the USA by car from my home base in 
> Illinois. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Paul S. Anderson, PhD  aka "Dr TLUD" 
> Email:   psanders at ilstu.edu   Skype: paultlud  Phone: +1-309-452-7072 
> Website:   www.drtlud.com 
> 
> On 7/5/2013 7:01 PM, Richard Stanley wrote: 
>> Hi Andrew. 
>> 
>> Climate "discussions" aside,   I wanted to elaborate on the implications 
>> of your observation about where" designing" is easier: 
>>   I agree with you that it is easier to design anything "for someone" ( 
>> especially those less equipped to express their opinions and experiences, 
>> needs and resources)…... than to do it with them in their context… 
>> 
>> My own experience tells me that the latter is the sticky part that few 
>> really want to get into and it's a huge part of determining whether or 
>> not ones best intentions stick or not. That sticky part makes really 
>> designing from within a good bit more challenging that simply designing a 
>> technical object and selling it here…. 
>> 
>> Richard Stanley 
>> NW part of the Americas 
>> ================== 
>> On Jul 4, 2013, at 12:14 AM, ajheggie at gmail.com wrote: 
>> 
>> [Default] On Thu, 4 Jul 2013 05:41:33 +0700,Paul Olivier 
>> < paul.olivier at esrla.com > wrote: 
>> 
>>> It is easy to design stoves for poor people in Third World countries. It 
>>> is 
>>> a much bigger challenge to design them for use each day in our own 
>>> kitchens. 
>> Stove design and use is on topic for [stoves] but there are other 
>> forums on which it is better to discuss world changing effects, 
>> important as they might be. 
>> 
>> AJH 
>> 
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</blockquote>


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