MHF, Modern Home Farm

Over 2 billion people around the world still struggle to eat safe, nutritious and sufficient foods(UN-reports,2019) with about 224 million undernourished sub-Saharan Africans(FAO,2016). To solve this, we created a Modern Home Farm(MHF), built with a technology to rear chickens and grow vegetables on same cage. Our mission is to 'ensure zero-hunger and complete-satisfaction through producing safe, diverse foods.' 

We tested our product in two settings, with 2 model farmers in Bugesera district(Rwanda) and 7 graduates in Kigali city. Results are quite impressive showing possibility to bring-in a positive impact(fresh-vegetable production) and earning us much money.

Given food scarcity as COVID-19's impact(FAO,2020), MHF's scalability will undoubtedly equip people with enough foods therefore mitigating food crisis risk. Beyond that, urban low-income residents will afford nutritious foods(USDA,2012). Our 5-year-long vision/goal is extending impact across Sub-Saharan region to boost 224 million undernourished people in collaboration with governments and NGOs.

Persisting malnutrition due to consumption of unhealthy foods, remains a national challenge for Rwanda. According to FAO, we risk a food crisis, unless we mitigate COVID-19 impacts across the food system(FAO, 2020). Quarantines, closing borders, supply chain, and trade disruptions could restrict people’s access to sufficient/diverse and nutritious sources of food especially in urban places(FAO, 2020). The Urban residents do not have access to fresh foods due to unavailability of field farms in cities where people could produce their own fresh foods which leads to consumption of unhealthy products. Today, about 55 percent of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 68 percent by 2050 especially in Africa and Southeast Asia, where hunger and poverty are currently mostly concentrated. Meanwhile some 80 percent of all food produced is consumed in urban areas(FAO, 2019). Hence, implying that they all need a quick survival. According to the UN’s State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2019 report, more than 2 billion people now struggles to eat “safe, nutritious and sufficient food”, putting them at risk of serious health problems(UN reports, 2019). MHF aims at solving them all.

MHF is an integrated farm in a form of a triangular prism flat on top. It integrates chickens inside the cage and crops on the outside mostly vegetables. This farm has three main parts which are the water system section, chicken section and crop section.

Water system section: It is mainly composed of a tank of water with pipes run in two ways. One pipe going to the chicken drinkers and another one going to crops as drip lines.

Chicken section: This is inside the cage comprising chicken space, drinkers, and feeders. Its floor is meshed allowing droppings to suitably fall into collectors to be used as manure for crops.

Crop section: the cage is built in the form of stairs and every stair will be able to carry 3 pipes which are 2 m long. This section will be covered by affordable tent to control environment during heavy rains.

MHF is designed in a way that is simple for anyone to operate whether it is about feeding the chickens, cleaning the cage, collecting eggs, fertilizing crops, or harvesting them because we believe that people don’t have much time to spend on one thing.

MHF is serving more than 2 billion people around the world who still struggle to eat safe, sufficient and nutritious foods(UN reports, 2019). The victims are overwhelmingly Urban low-income residents who inevitably don't have field farms to produce fresh foods(USDA, 2012), and rural residents who practically grow crops per season that they will not consume immediately, leading to malnutrition and consumption of high-carbon foods. 

Understanding them, we tested MHF in some of their communities. Fortunately, results showed that improvement is direct. MHF is helping these people to immediately feed on nutritious foods, and malnutrition in children will slightly end as a result of consuming fresh foods. The Urban low-income residents will now grow their own fresh foods despite the fact that they don't have access to field farms. 

Also, these low-income families in towns will afford the nutritious foods at lower prices, therefore, maintaining market supply chain(USDA, 2012). Beyond that, MHF is immediately tackling the impacts of COVID-19 by equipping all people at all levels with enough and safe foods, hence, ensuring food safety and security. 

As it was published in the UN's 2019 reports, many people in the world are struggling to eat safe, sufficient and nutritious foods. This is an implication that their lives are at high risk unless measures are taken. In the meantime, we created MHF as a tool that aligns with low-carbon footprint strategy through revolutionizing the way diets are accessed at a home level to both urban low-income residents and farmers. With MHF's scalability, these people will afford diverse, and nutritious foods at lower prices, hence promoting shift towards production of low-impact foods(low-carbon proteins diets).  

The conventional model of farming utilizes more land for both crops and animals separately. With MHF, not much land is used since working separately is not applying today. First and foremost, MHF is made of high technology of crop-livestock integration because it is a simple and health integrated farming which combines both growing of crops and rearing chickens on the same building where they symbioses each other. 

This technology gets MHF’s back when it comes to hydroponics. This is the technology of growing plants without soil, it utilizes sand, gravel, or liquid with added nutrients instead. Hence, MHF uses liquid with added nutrients in drip-lines where crops grow in a medium with minimum soil, hence, leaving no space for the competition since it is a new application of previously existing technology.

Furthering its sustainability and difference, we built it with a technology that makes it a movable product. Users can set it anywhere at home as they start farming activities. Once they want to change the location due to different causes, no need to destroy its cage instead they will displace it. Also, the way it is built in the form of stairs, gives it the ability to cover a small area of land as it goes upward (vertical farming) while producing sufficient foods to meet overall home consumption.

Modern Home Farm is a life changing business that will help people to feed on fresh foods and meat. It is an innovative application of existing technology consisting of integrated vertical farming, semi-hydroponics and poultry farming together in the same cage. Crops will be provided with essential nutrients via water-based solutions and direct scouting by users. This streamlined form of nutrition allows them to grow healthier with minimum chemicals. 

MHF will use semi-hydroponics technique whereby the growing medium is composed of regulated water and soil. This growing medium and plant root are housed in an opaque container that blocks out light and prevents the growth of harmful algae and bacteria. This enclosure slows down evaporation, making our farm more sustainable and cost-effective than conventional farming techniques. This method also reduces susceptibility to environmental risks. MHF will promote effective use of water via a well-controlled irrigation system that only uses what is necessary for our crops. MHF will allow us to produce crops with 70-95 percent less water than required for normal cultivation.

MHF is a clean, simple, health, integrated farm which will be an opportunity to increase crops and chicken production at home and feed the world's population as we combat malnutrition during this pandemic and beyond.

It does not sound new to listen to the word "crop-livestock integration", integrating animals and crops especially for large farms where animals feed from the available pastures on the same land. We are also familiar with the term Hydroponics as the act of growing crops in the absence of soil. In the meantime, MHF's technology combines the two concepts in one. As the name suggests, it is an integrated farm, combining crops and animals in the same location. 

MHF utilizes the technology of a highly fenced cage that contains chickens inside it and with a flat top carrying a triple of pipes that hold soil into which vegetables are grown. Here, these cages are arranged in a stair manner where one cage is placed at top edge of the previous cage, each carrying pipes at top. Therefore, this technology will allow a single cage to hold chickens in its inner space and carrying pipes with soil on its top. 

On other hand, the overall cage have a tank at top that contains water. MHF's technology allows this tank to provide water to crops and to chickens accordingly. There is a pipeline that comes immediately from the tank to pipes with soil, from top to bottom respectively, and another pipe from tank straight to the piped drinkers. Therefore, since MHF's technology is less common, refer to the video below.

Due to insufficient arable lands, we are providing portable, affordable, and land-conserving home farms, and land is minimized by 80%. MHF is 60% less expansive than its equivalent field farm, and uses 80-95% less water compared to field farms, hence, ensuring accessibility and sustainability respectively. With MHF's paid assistance, we will be increasing production 5 times the equivalent field-farm's production which may end-up reducing malnutrition and equipping people with sufficient foods as an instant response to COVID-19's impacts. 

10 people from our case study mentioned that unavailability of fresh vegetables implies minimum body immunity, causing stunts in children. This was in coincidence with FAO news that malnutrition and stunting in children remains the national challenge for Rwanda( Rwanda Demographic and Health Survey, 2015)(FAO Rwanda). However, after our implementation of MHF in Kayovu village of Bugesera District and across Rwanda, almost every child will start accessing nutritious foods, giving hope to stop malnutrition. 

These immediate goals have a linkage to our long-term outcomes which include the reduction of high-carbon foods consumption in cities(FAO, 2019) with our approach to minimize the cost of one MHF at a rate of 5% as we keep scaling leading to affordability. Satisfaction of more than 700 million Urban low-income residents who inevitably don't afford fresh foods from the city markets(USDA, 2009) through maintaining the market supply chain. Further, transforming MHF into a self-controlled system with sensors to detect humidity levels, automated water-nutrient streams and notifying a maintenance staff via a ‘Monitor-for-fresh’ App currently in-progress, to take a suitable action, with digital payment and delivery.

Evaluating our impact, we tested in two communities, one with model farmers and another with 7 graduates in Kigali city. The results have been an incredible point of encouragement to us, since it showed the possibility to bring a positive impact in any setting as it produced more fresh veggies and healthy eggs. Our model women farmers have profitable occupations today(working on MHF) and are engaged in vegetable production, children are now feeding on nutritious foods, and happiness is becoming an integral part of these families during this quarantine time.

Currently MHF is serving two communities. One with overall 1000 people, is our model farmers, and another is 7 fresh college graduates without job in Kigali city. We have tried our product on these two settings to measure its effectiveness and the results are promising. Our model farmer’s life has now changed. His wife is now involved in fresh vegetable production business as she takes care of MHF at home and the man still focuses on their field farm. The graduates in Kigali are now engaged in amaranths and egg production at the same time as a benefit of using MHF.

MHF aims at serving not only one country but multiple underdeveloped countries. We plan on reaching to over 1 million people in Rwanda by the end of 2021 as a response to COVID-19 effects and reaching more than 10 million people across sub-Saharan Africa by the end 2023 in collaboration with governments and NGOs.

Based on our initial return on investments, we plan to further our project by incorporating many farmers in villages and many families in towns in a single MHF community to ease the manufacturing and delivery services. The more the implementation, the lesser the cost of MHF becomes. We plan on gradually minimizing the cost of MHF at the rate of 5% to ensure affordability during scaling. This will increase awareness enabling us to serve over 700 million people globally in further years through collaborating with the governments, international institutions, UN agencies and NGOs.

We created a modern home farm which is portable and affordable, allowing growing of crops and rearing animals in the same cage. Our immediate goals are to ease the production of more nutritious foods at home which may end up reducing malnutrition. Equipping people with sufficient foods as an instant response to COVID-19 impacts. We also plan to immediately work with Rwanda Agricultural Board(RAB) to implement MHF across the country by next year to ensure direct survival of more than 1 million people through Rwandan "TWIGIRE MUHINZI MWOROZI extension program".

Our long-term goals include the reduction of high-carbon foods consumption in cities(FAO, 2019) due to the absence of fresh farms. Protection of more than 700 million Urban low-income residents who inevitably don't afford fresh foods from the city markets(USDA, 2009) in the meantime, maintaining the market supply chain. We also aim at increasing the GDP through meeting the overall home consumption with MHF yet leaving a space for normal field farms to produce for the market. 

To achieve these goals, we plan on partnering with international organizations, governments and NGOs for scaling. Testing these assumptions, we piloted MHF in two settings, in rural area Bugesera District with our model farmers and in Kigali city with 7 university graduates who currently don't have a contracted job. The results have been an incredible point of encouragement to us, since it showed the possibility to bring a positive impact in any setting as it produced more fresh veggies and healthy eggs.

MHF is a project that requires different inputs in terms of technical skills, recognition, and financial resources. To achieve our goals, we are having challenges to get some of the inputs.  

Firstly, financial resources is the main barrier. The construction of one MHF requires 400,000 FRW equivalent to $419.06 which is not easy for us to construct many products and also it is so challenging for some of our customers to afford it. So, we seek financial support to construct many products and the intervention of government and NGOs to help our customers to afford it. 

In addition to that, we have few limitations in terms of displacement because construction and upgrading of MHF occurs at the site and then, we are required to deliver them to our customers. So, we seek financial support to buy motor-vehicle assets. Also it will require our customers to have basic skills on the use of these products.

 Moreover, we are struggling to get accreditation, because for a small group of people to impact the lives of thousands of people it requires the collaboration with different organizations and accreditation from the government. Despite the above challenges, our determination and hard working spirit will help us to achieve our goals.

One of challenging barriers was to put in such amount of money to test a new product, however, our leading staff contributed money as startup costs to implement our project initially. We minimized dependence on external inputs for initial implementation. Undoubtedly, we believe that any institution comprehending the concept of our project(MHF), will be a source of large-scale implementation.

It sounds expensive hiring a staff of 416 employees to lead implementation of MHF across Rwandan 416 sectors respectively, however, we are organizing legal campaigns across Rwanda on persuading people specifically youth, to lead MHF's implementation voluntarily showing them how they will be making money season after season. This will create long lasting jobs for them. 

Furthering our adaptability to address barriers, we set some fee to training assistance by our staff equivalent to $10 per field intervention and a free assistance over a phone call. 

For MHF to be implemented and impact a large population, it has to be trustworthy and legally recognized.  We are currently motivated by being students at RICA university, recognized to educate a new generation of innovators in agriculture. In addition, we plan on working with Rwanda Agricultural Board(RAB) to implement MHF across the country, which will build trust in our customers.

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Full-time staff: 8

Part-time staff: 0

Partners: 2

Our team is a diversified class of 8 full-time staff with diverse skills that combine together to form a single vision towards a transformational change. 6 of our members are the students at the University of RICA, Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture. Through this university, they are equipped with knowledge and skills to tackle any agricultural challenge that may be imposed on them. Our operations in-charge is currently the President at this university, equipping him with leadership skills. 

Our financial manager has been a student affairs coordinator at Rwamagana Leaders School. Our marketing in-charge is also a current RICA marketing team's lead and this makes him an integral addition to our team. Our executive director is currently a student-unit 6 lead, he initiated a project at RICA named INFIM(Innovation For Impact) intending to transform ideas into real things to impact lives and make money. He is also a founder and recent executive director of a different project called PANGELASSA REVIVAL. His combination of intelligence, commitment, perseverance, creativity, and compassionate character, gives him the ability to outshine and deliver a solution to a specific problem. 

Our second operations in-charge is a former statistics coordinator at Ecole des Science Byimana Institute and a current student-units leader at RICA. Our model farmer has been doing agriculture for a life time and this provides him with the ability to guide other people in implementation processes. Our two other members are currently programmers and agro-technicians. 

We are currently having two groups of partners whom we inevitably work hand in hand.

1. RICA: Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture. As a leading university in Conservation Agriculture, it provides us with knowledge and skills to apply in Agriculture. Partnering RICA through the provision of the day to day training in conservation agriculture to equip our team with enough skills, strengthens our understanding and capacity to resolve any agricultural challenge and guidance on how to deal and work with farmers. 

2. KAYOVU CBOs: Community Based Organizations. These are farmers organization who practically do agriculture in a conventional way. They partner with us through adopting the new farming practices we put in.

In fact, according to the progression of our project, there are few organizations that we are going to work with in the few months to come. From the trial of our MHF we have seen that it is feasible, and the next step is to distribute it among Rwandan farmers. So, to do this we are approaching the organizations that have direct influence on farmers like RAB (Rwanda Agricultural Board) and FAO Rwanda (Food and Agriculture Organization of united Nations, branch of Rwanda) to help us in MHF implementation, and BDF(Business Development Fund) for financial support. From the collaboration with the above organizations we expect that we will get financial support to build more MHFs.

BUSINESS MODEL

Value proposition: 

Business will be providing/manufacturing affordable caged farms that save water, land, and time. Fresh vegetables and healthy eggs. These farms have many advantages over the conventional field farms, 60% less-expensive than its equivalent field-farm. 5-times more production, and 80-95% less water utility, no fatigue,....    

Key customers:

Low-income, middle-class, and upper-class people.

Key activities:

Creating, fixing/assembling, delivering cages. After sale activities will be monitoring assistance, maintaining, and repairing cages. With on-delivery services including selling fresh vegetables and egg production.

Revenue streams and key expenses

Cage's sales revenue net-income of $35 per cage, paid assistance at $10 per session. Repair/maintenance, and delivery revenues, and loans from financial institutions. With salary expenses, raw materials, and other operating costs.

The table below shows the business forecasting in 5 years

BUSINESS FORECASTING FOR 5 YEARS IN USD($)

Having MHF in mind, we wanted to empower low standard local farmers who rely and survive from agriculture and urban low-income residents who inevitably do not afford sufficient nutritious foods due to unavailability of field farms in cities. Fortunately, the idea came into existence and it was tested to be successful. However, based on the large increase in number of people, and current situation of COVID-19’s invasion, it is difficult to satisfy this large number of people in coincidence with our barriers mentioned. 

Therefore, we found it wise to apply to SOLVE because we know that once selected, we will be opened to the world of experts who will provide us with guidance, hence our project will highly impact the lives of many people. We would also like the partnerships for they will help us through financial support, facilitation, and empowerment to elevate our impact on the higher level. We believe in extending our impact beyond Rwanda. So, it will be a great opportunity for us to be selected because we will meet and partner with people, companies with diverse experiences, therefore, widening our minds on the worldwide project running.

We cannot hesitate to reveal our wish to be part of the MIT community for it will be the best source of credible project and international business management. Finally, we are applying to SOLVE to win the prize for it will enhance our living standards, address our barriers, and help us to improve the lives of other vulnerable people.

Our immediate goals are to ease the production of more nutritious foods at home which may end up reducing malnutrition and equipping people with sufficient foods as an instant response to COVID-19 impacts. These immediate goals have a linkage to our long-term outcomes which include the reduction of high-carbon foods consumption in cities(FAO, 2016) due to the absence of fresh farms, protection of more than 700 million Urban low-income residents who inevitably don't afford fresh foods from the city markets(USDA, 2009) in the meantime, maintaining the market supply chain, and increasing the GDP through meeting the overall home consumption with MHF yet leaving a space for normal field farms to produce for the market. Thus, we highly need partnerships to further our impact as we plan to reach out to many people around the world.

We want to work with several organizations both local and international to ensure that our product serves efficiently and effectively. This is mainly because we do not have the means to reach out to many people therefore partnership is the best way for us to boost our impact as quick as possible to combat corona-virus effects. We would first like to work with MIT community and the following organizations

UNHCR: since this organization deals with refugees it will be easy for us to impact refugees campuses with MHF. Most of refugees don’t access food because no land to produce their foods. With MHF, we believe that they will be able to get food.

IFAD: this organization is also interested in fighting malnutrition and a lot of funds are raised to feed the hungry, therefore instead of giving people food, we believe that they might want to give people a more sustainable resource which is MHF.

WFP: Similarly, this provides funds to fight hunger and malnutrition therefore it will be interesting for them to outspread MHF to vulnerable people.

Local NGOs: most of the time NGOs put together money to help the poor by giving them food and other essentials, therefore they would also like to give people a more sustainable solution to hunger problems which is MHF.

Governments: this is a very important actor because it helps to encourage the use of such products to all people as a way of increasing the GDP, hence facilitating our marketing.

One of the key aspects that MHF comprise, is the minimization of land use. with regard to working with the refugee camps, MHF was previously presented to the refugee agency to expose its vital role in boosting refugee lifestyle. At top, MHF has premiered to engage some number of Libyan refugees settled in Gashora-Rwanda through providing accessible food-chains without spending much. 

These immediate outputs links to our long-term outcomes including MHF's horizontal merging to NGOs passionate about refugees to equip every single refugee camp with at least 1 MHF per 10 refugee households. In effective use of available resources, we claimed to be accredited to install as many MHFs in refugee camps as possible and we still wait for the partnership and support. 

Therefore premiering to receive this prize will fantastically pave our way to refugee implementation hence providing job opportunities to refugees through MHFs monitoring, product delivery and assistance earnings. With our financial sustainability, we will use this prize to engage refugees in our plan to equip them with nutritious foods, creating them job opportunities and providing them with necessary skills to run MHF and start their own businesses aligned with MHF's ideology. We believe to will ensure zero hunger and complete satisfaction in refugees.

A lot of people specifically women stay with the stereotypes about the home and work activities, denoting ones designed for boys and other ones designed for girls. This creates a limitation in recruitment and job positions based on gender discrimination, where more men are employed than women in certain fields(Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017). 

However, MHF will be the great opportunity for the women who inevitably stay home due to unemployment. When we were designing MHF structure and running system, we proposed that it will be highly run by women to ensure the complete awareness and follow-up. As a result, every woman will positively be engaged and empowered through running their MHF and earning money for their families, hence contributing to the family's development rather than relying on  man's revenues. 

Testing this assumption, we assigned one of our MHFs to one of our model farmers' wife. She was previously unemployed but today, she is engaged in vegetable and egg production where she takes care of the farm(MHF), harvests some vegetables and sell them to the nearby residents. We plan on engaging so many other women in these communities as result of effective use of this prize. Getting this prize will also help to recruit many staff members with women at large to help us extend MHF's implementation and creating jobs for them. We will effectively use the prize to create routines between women and our contractors to safely run their own businesses. 

Since the beginning of this millennium, the world set sustainable development goals(SDGs) to be achieved by 2030 with the purpose to address global challenges without compromising future generations. Unfortunately, things have gone naively different and now the world is unable to bring things on the right track. Environment is now drastically degraded, 

High food crisis and malnutrition is now a global challenge due to foods scarcity and unsustainable production. All these resulted into unconsolidated communities with social exclusions and no shared prosperity. Fortunately, I and my team are still young and motivated to see things from a different perspective and have a chance to formulate a better future. Allow me to give you the threads of our critical assumptions to strengthen for us to make a change so that what is happening today will never happen in the future.

As illustrated in the MIT-solve application, more than 2 billion people around the world still struggle to eat safe, sufficient, and nutritious foods(UN reports, 2019). This implies that after the pandemic, their lives are completely at risk unless we stand up and act collaboratively. With my team, this have been our opportunity to come up with a life changing projects that need support to scale and impact the lives of millions of people. To solve this, sustainable food production through empowerment of agricultural infant industries that produce diverse, and nutritious foods in our local community in Bugesera-Rwanda, is an essential part of our theory of change. This clearly reveals that any support that may arise upon us, will fruitfully lead us to achieving our immediate goal to boost those rural residents who inevitably don't know the risk from what they are consuming. This is completely aligned with our goal to keep families with fresh vegetables as we are committed today.

Besides the food crisis, environmental degradation is now another burden too heavy for the world to carry. According to the world counts, over 55 billion tons of fossil energy is now extracted from the earth, and with the current deforestation rhythm, 5-10% of tropical forest species becomes extinct every decade(The world counts, 2020). This led to water scarcity, drastic climate change, land degradation, and loss of biodiversity leaving no hope of life in the 30 years. In the meantime, I and my team are working on the other life-changing project that aims at ensuring responsible farming where we will develop a software to monitor each single agro-based activity, by enabling the governments to control every arable land and a specific activity being carried out on that specific activity. This will minimize the risk of the riparian lives extinction by farmers who encroach riparian lands. Mitigation of non-environmentally friend activities by strengthening environmental impact assessments(EIA) and enforcement of environmental protection campaigns around the globe, is another long-term slightly slow down the risk of environmental degradation on the planet. So, with this prize, we will be able to fully develop this software and the dream of responsible production and environmental conservation will soon be a reality in the near future.

In wrapping up with a forward vision towards achieving sustainable development goals, COVID-19 crisis is being our best time to extend our contribution in the survival of human kind. If we get this prize, we will use it to continual transform our ideas into a new thing to renew the lives of people. Our insightful spirit of hardworking, impressive logical thinking abilities among our peers and combination of our intelligence, commitment, perseverance, creativity, and compassionate character, makes us worthy change makers. Thus, with the Future Planet Capital Prize, environmental conservation, sustainable production, zero hunger and complete satisfaction, will soon be a reality in the world.