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DIY Agriculture

Sesame — Economics

Metadata research draftEvidence limits

⚠️ Status: metadata draft. Every DOI below is a candidate metadata record from the survey research/sesame-seeds/report.md — title and identifier only, not screened evidence. The survey names Mexico economics as a weak coverage area (§7): no direct regional candidate exists for farm budgets, household labor, or oil-pressing economics. No cost, price, wage, or profitability figure is asserted. Substantive values remain Unknown until S-#### source notes exist (docs/methodology/evidence.md). Not financial advice.

Two products, two ledgers

Section titled “Two products, two ledgers”
  • Clean seed and extracted oil are priced and accounted separately — economics.market_price_note in data/crops/sesame.yaml already fixes: “Separate cleaned seed and extracted oil; no combined price.” A household that presses converts seed value into oil-plus-cake value at an unknown recovery rate (yield.md, processing.md). Evidence: Known (project rule).
  • Home cost per kg — Evidence: Unknown (null in data/crops/sesame.yaml); currency and market conventions are unset until a project convention exists.

What the candidates cover (title level only)

Section titled “What the candidates cover (title level only)”
  • Tillage, sesame seed yield, energy budget, and economic return (10.3906/tar-1011-1505, 2012) — an energy/economics systems record; its context is a mechanized field system, not a hand-worked plot, and its results are unread.
  • Myanmar production challenges/opportunities review (10.3390/su12093515, 2020) and Uganda production/export trends (10.1051/ocl/2020073, 2021) — national value-chain framings from other continents; not transferable price or cost signals for Mexico.
  • Smallholder technical efficiency (10.1007/s43546-023-00604-3, 2023) — a farm-efficiency study candidate; which inputs and frontier it measures is unknown until full text.
  • Yield/quality research review (10.3389/fpls.2022.863521, 2022) — context for research directions, not budgets.
  • Value-chain food-safety review (10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e36347, 2024; survey §5) — included as a boundary reminder: market participation carries allergen/microbial/mycotoxin/residue requirements that vary by jurisdiction; no compliance practice is prescribed here.

Labor — the dominant unknown

Section titled “Labor — the dominant unknown”
  • The survey flags the weakest human-scale evidence as labor-hours per kilogram for cutting/bundling, hand threshing, winnowing, and cleaning (§2), plus small-press throughput and filtration economics. All — Evidence: Unknown; open question 10 and experiment E3 are the instrument.
  • Because sesame seed is tiny and its harvest is timing-sensitive (harvesting.md), labor per kg of clean seed plausibly dominates home economics — but even that qualitative ranking stays Evidence: Unknown until measured.

Investment and scale questions

Section titled “Investment and scale questions”
  • Whether a manual or small mechanical press pays off depends on press cost, oil recovery per kg (open question 13), cake value, labor, and local prices — every term Evidence: Unknown. No purchase recommendation is made.
  • Input costs (seed, water, fertility, containers) — Evidence: Unknown (see fertilization.md and irrigation.md).

Coverage limits

Section titled “Coverage limits”
  • The survey’s own weakest-evidence list is economics-shaped: cutting/bundling, hand threshing, winnowing, cleaning losses, labor-hours per kilogram, and small-press settling/filtration economics (§2). No accepted household cost evidence was established.
  • More than 49% of canonical records lack abstracts (survey §7). The report shortlist contains five yield/economics records, none a Mexico household budget. No cost, price, or wage number can be responsibly quoted yet.

Three outputs to account, not one

Section titled “Three outputs to account, not one”
  • A pressing scenario tracks up to three distinct streams — clean seed, extracted oil, and residual cake — while the usability and value of each remain Evidence: Unknown. Any future economics record must state which streams it counts.
  • Seed, water, fertility, labor, containers, and pressing equipment are candidate cost categories; their relevance and value for a household remain Evidence: Unknown. This is framing for record-keeping, not advice.

Small-scale relevance

Section titled “Small-scale relevance”
  • Home-versus-market comparisons for seed and oil currently have no usable numbers. E1–E4 can record costs and labor alongside physical outputs so a later local budget does not rely on borrowed statistics.
  • If selling is ever considered, the value-chain safety review candidate above signals that buyer/regulatory requirements exist; authoritative jurisdiction-specific guidance would be required — this dossier does not provide it.

Unknowns and experiments

Section titled “Unknowns and experiments”
  • Home cost per kg of clean seed and per kg of pressed oil — Evidence: Unknown.
  • Labor-hours per kg across all manual stages — Evidence: Unknown; Evidence: Needs experiment (E3, open question 10).
  • Press investment vs recovery tradeoff — Evidence: Unknown; Evidence: Needs experiment (open question 13).
  • Mexico-specific price, cost, and budget evidence — Evidence: Unknown (survey §7 gap).
Section titled “Related pages”

Provenance

Section titled “Provenance”