Sustainable Dry Food Chain

 Huge quantities of fresh produce have been lost globally from spoilage due to shut-downs of cities and towns in an attempt to reduce spreading COVID-19 virus. Unfortunately, losses were exacerbated in developing countries because of the lack of cold storage infrastructure. This problem is already compounded by the fact that post-harvest losses in Africa is over $20 billion USD annually, reducing income to 470 million farmers and other value-chain actors by 15%.  A developed dry food chain applicable to smallholder agriculture provides a sustainable solution to food preservation.  However, crop drying is an energy intensive process, and for fresh produce, the amount of moisture can be as high as 85%. The common open-sun drying, long known to mankind is still practiced in primitive unhygienic ways (road-side drying). Our innovative portable solar dehydrator, DEHYTRAY, provides a sustainable means of empowering smallholder farmers to deliver quality dried foods to consumers today.

JUA Technologies Internationalempowers small holder farmers and small/mid-sized agribusinesses with energy efficient multipurpose solar food dehydrators to reduce post-harvest losses and wastage, while providing economic growth to their businesses. Over $20 billion worth of food is lost globally due to the high rate of spoilage of crops after harvest. This problem is acute globally, especially with small holder farmers and agribusinesses in developing countries who can’t meet stringent quality standards of premium global markets. Spoilage of nutrient-rich plant produce such a vegetables, fruits and herbs, which are typically grown by women farmers and the primary sources of natural vitamins in developing countries can incur losses of over 50%. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in more losses of these crops because movement restrictions and the closures of food markets have prevented farmers from selling their produce. Even when consumers might be able to purchase large amounts of produce in the event of a shut-down, the lack of electric power in a lot of homes and the warm weather in the tropics leads to huge losses from spoilage. This problem affects all: farmers, market traders and consumers. A solution to this problem is to use the "dry food chain".

The DEHYTRAY is first of a kind solar food dehydrator currently available on the market, which can be used to dry various types of food from granular products like cocoa and coffee to fruits, vegetables and spices. Unlike a lot of solar dryers, which are large units that need to be built on site, the DEHYTRAY consists of a blackbody tray, which holders the crop/food and a cover to prevent the crop from contamination with the elements. Because of the large surface are to volume ratio, the blackbody and cover, which allows 92% solar radiation through, the temperatures within the drying chamber rises to twice the ambient temperature on a sunny day. Its portability enables it to be moved easily, transported by various means of transport and its capacity expanded by just adding the number of DEHYTRAY units needed.  Lastly, the DEHYTRAYTM won two prestigious awards in 2019 – the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineering AE50 Innovation Awards, and was named a finalist in the food category of Fast Company 2019 World Changing Ideas.

 JUA Technologies International(JTI) empowers smallholder farmers and small/mid-sized agribusinesses with energy efficient multipurpose solar food dehydrators (dryers) to reduce post-harvest losses and wastage, while providing economic growth to their businesses. Dried food nutrients, phytosanitary and tastes are preserved with JTI’s dryers.  JTI’s goal is to empower small holder farmers and promote profitable agribusiness among women and youth using these solar dryers. Over $20 billion worth of food is lost globally due to the high rate of spoilage of crops after harvest. This problem is acute globally, especially with smallholder farmers and agri-based SMEs in developing countries who can’t meet stringent quality standards of premium global markets. For fresh produce like fruits and vegetables, losses of 50% are common. Smallholder farmers not only lose crops and income, but can’t take part in the 180 billion USD global demand for dried fruits, vegetables spices, herbs and nuts. Additionally, poor communities (farmers inclusive) suffer from deficiency in micro-nutrients in the diets of their children, which is the major cause of stunting and anemic conditions in developing countries.

The DEHYTRAY enables small growers to produce premium dried crops for the market, and enable households, many who grow their own foods in home gardens to eat healthy nutrient-rich plants (fruits, vegetables, and herbs) year-round. The DEHYTRAY will impact lives in the following ways: provide food security by reducing spoilage losses (50% or more of fruits and vegetables are lost to spoilage in developing countries), improve the nutrition of families by promoting consumption of nutrient-rich plants, reduce carbon footprint by using a renewable energy source, reduce risks from contamination by aflatoxin caused from improper unhygienic drying, and provide income.

The DEHYTRAY is a portable versatile solar dehydrator for hygienic drying of foods. A portable solar food dehydrator in every rural farming household is synonymous to having a microwave oven in every household modern household in the city. This was the description of the DEHYTRAY given by one researcher in Nigeria. The DEHYTRAY prevents food losses and wastage in both rural and urban households by providing an energy-efficient and hygienic drying solution for foods. Once food is dried, it can be preserved at room temperature without the need for cold storage, which is absent in a majority of homes in rural Africa, Asia and the Americas. Another reason why the DEHYTRAY would be transformative to agriculture in developing countries is because it enables smallholder farmers participate in the global market place of premium quality dried fruits, vegetables, nuts, spices, herbs, and medicinal plants. This is a $180 billion USD annual market, which currently can't be accessed by most smallholder farmers. Our goal is to use the "Pay-As-You-Go" model by companies such as M-KOPA to make the DEHYTRAY accessible to every farming household that needs it.  The tray part of the DEHYTRAY was also designed to be used in large solar dryers when stacked, and will be used in JTI’s 10 tray, 15 tray and 150 tray solar dryers. The DEHYTRAY is a licensed Trademark name registered by JUA Technologies International with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

The DEHYTRAY core technology is the efficient capture of solar thermal heat in a portable drying platform that eliminates contamination of the product being dried by the elements (dust and foreign materials), birds, livestock and domesticated animals at the farm or household.

The DEHYTRAY has been sold to customers in the USA, Kenya, Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, Peru, Tajikistan, with the goal of penetrating the market organically via collaborative projects with multinational and local NGOs, universities and research organizations, local and private extension services, and social media. Field tests and pilot deployment of the DEHYTRAY has been successfully done in Senegal, Tajikistan, Nigeria, Ghana and Peru. We have established a distributorship in Kenya, and pursuing distributorships in East Africa, West Africa and India via strategic partnerships using Pay-As-You-Go product access models, and other business models. About 1,000 units of the DEHYTRAY was recently supplied to the UN FAO in Kenya. The DEHYTRAY is available on our Shopify Store and on Amazon.

A huge part of food ecosystems is reducing food wastage, reducing energy use in food production and if possible using renewable sources of energy in order to reduce the carbon footprint. Drying foods happens to be one of the most energy intensive value-added processes in food production. This is why it is a challenge for small growers to access energy. The abundance of solar energy in the humid tropics has not been effectively harnessed for productive use in our food ecosystems. A solution to this problem is to use the "dry-chain", drying upon harvest followed by moisture-proof packaging will preserve nutrients, prevent toxin contamination from spoilage by molding, conserve energy and prevent wastage. Once food is dried, no further energy in refrigeration is needed to preserve.  Additionally, because drying reduces both volume and weight, the cost of moving the same weight of plant nutrients is a lot less. We propose to deploy our novel portable solar dryer, DEHYTRAY to farmers and traders for hygienic and quality drying of fresh produce, packaged for the market. The DEHYTRAY can meet high product standards, not just for rural smallholder farmers, but for home gardeners in large modern cities.

The DEHYTRAY empowers women and youths in value added dried foods processing. Most women and youths are typically the ones engaged in drying crops in rural farming households.  The DEHYTRAY will open the door to various business opportunities for women and youths in the production of dried foods (produce). Farming can be a viable lucrative enterprise for small growers if the markets can be inclusive to them. 40% small enterprises are owned by women in Africa and the continent has a large youth population (60%). We have supplied about 1,500 units of the DEHYTRAY to Senegal, Kenya, Tajikistan, Peru, Nicaragua, Ghana, Nigeria and the USA.  Based on best estimates from the use of about 500 units supplied about one year ago, 120 MT foods were prevented from spoilage, saving 186 kJ of fossil fuel use. Another impact would be the prevention of trees being cut (deforestation) and health hazards from smoke inhalation when using direct burning wood or old tires. Our goal is to impact 10 to 15 million small growers in rural parts of the developing world in the next 10 years, mostly in Africa, South-East Asia and the Americas by empowering them with clean solar powered dehydrators for value-addition in fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices and medicinal plants. We would measure impact with respect to: drastically reduce food wastage, increase plant micro-nutrient uptake, increase economic empowerment of rural farming households and increase off-grid solar power options for households using our other device, Power Use Leveraging Solar Energy.

The DEHYTRAY has already been shipped to four continents and a distributorship established in Kenya, where we intend to pursue scale-up to reach over one million farmers in the next 5 years and impact 5 million people (one farmer/5 people per household). However, we realized that we need to have local presence on the ground to effectively facilitate last-mile delivery, technology access and adequate training. Over the next 2 years, JTI plans to scale production and distribution of the DEHYTRAY™ in East and West Africa, and India. We are trying to establish distributorship in East Africa, West Africa and India via strategic partnerships and implement a Pay-As-You-Go strategy (PAYG) to technology access. We plan to establish two sister companies, JUA Technologies East Africa in Kenya by the end of 2020 and JUA Technologies West Africa in Nigeria by the end of 2021. Both companies will be responsible for organizing last mile distributorship of the DEHYTRAY via PAYG and other business models, training, and dried product market linkages.

The primary barriers to accomplishing our goals are financial and manpower (management and technical). Production of the DEHYTRAY can be scaled by our manufacturers in Indiana. We have demonstrated that we can ship out 20ft and 40ft containers of 1,000 and 2,000 units, respectively, to our locations of interest. However, we need presence at these locations to coordinate last-mile distributorship, training, and technical support. These are key attributes to get the DEHYTRAY adopted by farmers and households. We are looking for strategic partners to support use with financing to enable us recruit permanent staff, both local and international, also advisors who have experience in developing and selling technologies to the bottom-of-the-pyramid market. We are also looking for cooperate partnerships, especially in the areas of market access to dried foods manufactured using the DEHYTRAY.

Some of our approaches to address the barriers have been mentioned in the previous question. We are currently working with the Indiana Small Business Development Cooperation (ISBDC) to identify 3 top markets to focus on, and also working with the U.S. Commerce Office. We would be pursuing a grant with USAID DIV program and other similar programs to seek for low-cost grants to help us implement scale-up in our first market, Kenya. Establishing our presence in Kenya will enable us to access other countries in East Africa. Simultaneously, we are pursuing strategic partners to conduct large pilots in Nigeria and Ghana, prior to launching our sister company JUA Technologies West Africa in 2021. We are also engaged with some partners in India, evaluating distributorship partnerships there. All these activities will hinge on our access to finance, especially low-risk finance/direct investment.

Full-time staff: 2 (co-founders, but they have other jobs)

Part-time R&D: 3 staff (consultants on a as-needed basis)

Part-time marketing: 1 staff (consultant on a as needed-basis)

Advisors: One advisor recruited by JUA Technologies International

External advisor: One advisor representing Purdue Foundry Incubator

Klein Ileleji, PhD is a Professor of Agricultural & Biological Engineering at Purdue University and co-founder, CEO/Chief Technology Officer of JUA Technologies International LLC, with over 20 years experience working internationally (Africa, Europe, North-America, South America and Asia) in crop post-harvest handling. Reiko Habuto Ileleji, PhD is co-founder, CFO and Chief Missions Officer with experience in running a small-business.  Both co-founders have invested $180,000 of their own private funds and are committed to the success of the project. There is one part-time contract staff working on product development/design, and three part-time consultants and a seasoned advisor, Larry Loehr on its advisory board. Larry Loehr has over 30 years experience with Dupont, and subsequently several years of management with a biotechnology start-up. The DEHYTRAYTM is manufactured and fulfilled by three Indiana-based manufacturing, OEM and logistics contractors. As funding becomes available, the team intends hiring a full-time marketing/business development/partnerships director, product development and test engineers for its US and overseas markets. We’d focus on hiring a team to start-up our sister company in Kenya. Additionally, we will begin R&D to improve thermal collection and control systems on its larger multipurpose dehydrator, the DEHYMELEONTM,which uses the DEHYTRAY technology, upon receipt of USDA SBIR funding.

We are partnered with Elevate Ventures, an Indiana Venture firm, which we received $20,000 seed-funding and $50,000 matching-funds for our USDA-SBIR Phase I. We interact with them frequently to give updates of our progress. 

We also partnering with Sidley Austin, who provide pro bono legal services for us in the U.S. and help us access their attorney network overseas. 

Lastly, we have research partnerships with several universities and research institutions with whom we have worked collaboratively to test the Dehytray in the USA, Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana: Purdue University-West Lafayette, Indiana; Fort-Valley State University-Georgia, USDA-ARS Lab in Albany, CA; University of Nairobi-Kenya, Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization, University of Ibadan-Nigeria and six other Nigerian universities, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture-Ibadan-Nigeria; Biotechnology and Nuclear Agriculture Research Institute-Ghana Atomic Energy Commission.

All these partnerships would be vital to scaling-up the dry food chain in Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana.

We provide technology (DEHYTRAY) and training (how to effectively use the DEHYTRAY, package dried products and develop the dry food chain). Our goal is to use the "Pay-As-You-Go" model by companies such as M-KOPA to make the Dehytray accessible to every home that needs it.

The MIT Solver is one platform to show how you can solve one of the worlds most challenging problems. I was inspired to develop the portable solar food dehydrator, DEHYTRAY during my work with smallholder farmers in Ghana and Nigeria. Having grown up in Nigeria, and achieved the highest level of education in agricultural engineering, it was painful to still see that sun drying is still being conducted in primitive ways. I saw women and their children sit all day in the sun because they needed to keep an eye on the crops dried on the pavement or side of the road from pilferage by goats and rewetting by sudden rainfall. Crop quality was impacted by the poor practice of laying crops on the ground or by the road side, shutting off economic opportunities for these farmers. The COVID-19 has shown vulnerabilities in our current food systems and it is farmers and stakeholders in developing countries that are mostly affected. Our technology, the DEHYTRAY offers a viable solution that is a low hanging fruit. We can solve the problems today, not tomorrow. Our technology cuts across 4 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (No poverty, Zero Hunger, Affordable and Clean Energy, Decent Work and Economic Growth).

1. Funding and revenue model: work with an investment partner that understand bottom-of-the-pyramid market, and corporate partners.

2. Board of advisors: Add seasons board of advisors with experience in this space.

3. Product service and marketing.

Wholefoods, Starbucks, Walmart, UPS/DHL/FedEx, Amazon

Our technology is portable and can be introduced in refugee camps to help farmers produce and supply dried foods to these camps.

Most post-harvest drying activities (over 90%) such as drying are conducted by women and their children. 

We should win the price because our solution, a portable solar food dehydrator, is a simple but yet novel device that has the potential to address the acute food wastage from needless spoilage caused by the lack of technology.  The potential impact is huge and cuts across several UN SDG goals. With determination and little resources, we have achieve quite a bit since we launched our product to the market a year ago. The Future Planet Capital Prize would be a huge help to scale-up our impact. We not only value the price money, but the connections that being awarded would bring. We know there would be a lot of good innovations worthy of the award, and we must commend them. However, we know ours would help to solve some pressing needs with respect to food supply issues being faced under the COVID-19 pandemic.