[Stoves] Fwd: business sickness (Xavier, Crispin)

[Traveller]

Xavier and Crispin:

Are you suggesting that we have been selling false dreams - to cooks or to
our masters? :-)

I don't think the customers' or governments' behavior is paradoxical or
irrational.

1. Yes, a "stove" is a part of the "cooking experience", the rhythm,
intra-family power relationships, family budgeting ("home economics")
practices, entwined in peer pressure, etc.

2. Education, perception of "status" (within family, community, and
geographic regions), and high opportunity cost tag on the cook's time (if
pregnant or young mother, widowed sister, so on), influence changes in (1).
Some other intervening variables are location and structure of housing,
availability of partially cooked foods or fully cooked meals outside homes,
family size, location of employment and buying patterns for cooking
 materials.

Anybody who has wandered through any part of the developing world can't but
fail to notice how things have changed in so many ways for the poor and
lower middle class people - if nothing else, the numbers have grown,
residential and employment locations and conditions have shifted, average
family size has shrunk (except in certain pockets) and kitchen is
outsourced in stages.

On the other hand, we have been stuck with sorry academic tales of
"household energy" - neglecting modern fuels and electricity - with sad
caricatures of cooking for the poor people. I don't need to name names,
just look at the pictures  marketed on one report after another. I am
sometimes so angry, we experts have grabbed the most intimate possession of
poor women - their private space for our pictures, their thoughts for our
surveys and useless theories.

And worse - some model of "standardized" cooking by a "standardized"
combination of fuels, stoves, utensils and rhythm of combustion (stripping
away even fuel quality and nutritional concerns), now to produce some
"standardized" emissions, "standardized deaths and disease".

It is so comforting to talk about how the customer is always wrong and the
expert is always right.

Paradox and irrationality are in the eyes - or eyeglasses - of the
beholder.

Let's write a proposal for a 20, 40-year multi-centimillion-dollar research
project for biomass cooking in 100 poor countries, 100 million cooks. With
multisectoral experts and "big data", real-time measurements of everything,
and instant press releases and videocasts.

Oh. We have been doing that anyway, haven't we? GACC should be given
another contract.

Nikhil

PS to Crispin: I am not quite an idiotic Luddite. I am thrilled by your
"puts out enough power to run a home is a very attractive option" and
"alternatives which often include an engine." Not for the bottom 50-80% of
rural households in SA or SSA yet, but possibly for the commercial users
and the rich. As with climate change, the rich should take the first steps
- a 2-5 kW system with energy storage, highly efficient appliances, and
reliable backup that can take out 30% of the primary energy demand from the
area.

And to Xavier: A good enough stove for local environmental and economic
conditions will find a market. "Willingness to pay" is a vague concept, and
economists don't know a half of it. When girls start demanding that their
future in-laws have private latrines and a good kitchen - clean, with a $15
electric kettle and fan, and a $20 "clean enough" wood stove with a hood,
no dung cakes, boys will fall in line sooner or later. Oh, some day our
girls will do "complete, irreversible transition" to super stoves as GACC
yakkers demand. In the meantime, we have to keep on testing and marketing.





---------
(India +91) 909 995 2080

>
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2016 01:08:53 +0530
> From: Xavier Brandao <xvr.brandao at gmail.com>
> To: stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org
> Subject: Re: [Stoves] Fwd: business sickness
> Message-ID: <3c20df11-1f69-0598-564c-5ceacf1b50a5 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
>
> Probably, we are more often facing a problem of willingness to pay, than a
> problem of affordability. Without always knowing it.
> In India, people get in huge debts for marriages. In West Africa,
> people get in huge debts for burials.
> Yet they will tell you: "Paying this for a wood/charcoal stove? Are
> you mad?".
>
> Xavier
>
>
> On 7/19/16 8:39 PM, stoves-request at lists.bioenergylists.org wrote:
> > Don't tell people (or even assume) what they can and cannot afford. Make
> > them an offer that is too good to refuse. They might take it.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2016 15:53:17 -0400
> From: Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com>
> To: "'Discussion of biomass cooking stoves'"
>         <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
> Subject: Re: [Stoves] Fwd: business sickness
> Message-ID: <COL401-EAS1681BF19A084157DD0890D8B1370 at phx.gbl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Dear Xavier
>
> That hits the nail on the head.
>
> People will pay what they can for something that has a positive
> value proposition.
>
> >Probably, we are more often facing a problem of willingness to pay, than
> a problem of affordability. Without always knowing it.
>
> >In India, people get in huge debts for marriages. In West Africa,
> people get in huge debts for burials. Yet they will tell you: "Paying this
> for a wood/charcoal stove? Are you mad?"
>
> So, I have been floating a couple of propositions as you know about
> stoves that do more, even if they cost more. One is the provision of
> electricity. I was touring a number of manufacturers in western North
> Carolina over the past week and found one that is dealing with large output
> Thermo-acoustic generators. These units can put out 200 amps at 24 volts
> and need an input temperature on the order of 700 C which is ideal for wood
> and coal stoves. I will definitely chase that up.
>
> The point is that a stove that puts out enough power to run a home is a
> very attractive option. One that heats a pan, not so much. Anyone burning
> fuel
> should be very interested in saving money on the alternatives which
> often include an engine.
>
> Regards
> Crispin in warm and sunny Waterloo
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20160721/83e3bc21/attachment.html>