MIT Solve

Solution Overview

Solution Name:

Reducing post harvest loss in Africa

One-line solution summary:

We buy all available fruit and vegetables at a good price, process them close to the farms and sell them nationally and internationally.

Pitch your solution.

The problem we want to solve is the post harvest food loss (PHL) in Africa, where PHL amount to 100 millions tons annually (FAO - SAVE FOOD).
This means loss of income for the farmers and loss of water, land, labor and capital.
PHL is mainly due to low roads infrastructures, lack of cold warehouses and low processing facilities.
Our solution is technical and organizational.
On the technical hand, we bypass the lack of infrastructure and low finance of those countries by designing mini-factories, that can process fruits and vegetables as close to the farms as possible.
Vegetables are processed into puree and fruits are processed into puree or juice.
On the organizational hand, we designed an ecosystem which address the whole food value chain in those countries.The ecosystem will include government agencies, food processors, farmers, end products distributors, etc.

Film your elevator pitch.

What specific problem are you solving?

According to FAO (“SAVE FOOD” report):

Food loss and waste amounts to US$ 310 billion in developing countries, fruits and vegetables having the highest wastage rates.
In Africa alone, post-harvest food loss (PHL) amount to 100 millions tons annually,

PHL amount to a major squandering of resources, including water, land, energy, labour and capital and needlessly produce greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to global warming and climate change,
PHL aloso means lost of income for small farmers and higher prices for poor consumers.

The PHL is due to:

low roads infrastructures to carry crops to the cities where most customers live,
lack of cold warehouses to increase the shelf life of the crops,
low number of processing facilities. The existing ones are often build near the cities, which favor large farmers who can carry the crops on long distances.

On the other end of the food value chain:

The Africa's growing urban population is increasingly seeking processed and easy-to-process foods (FAO - “SAVE FOOD” report),
African middle class and dispora represent more than 170 millions potential customers (McKinsey Global Institute and World bank reports) for the end products made from those lost crops.

What is your solution?

Our solution is technical and organisational. It focus on vegetable and fruits, that are the more vulnerable post-harvest crops.

On the technical hand, we are designing a modular mini-factory that can process fruits and vegetables as close to the farms as possible. Vegetables are processed into puree and fruits are processed into puree or juice. The purees are packaged in 400 gram and 800 gram bags and the juices are packaged in 33 cl and 1 l bottles. They are then thermally stabilised, which extends their shelf life by 1.5 years.

By moving processing closer to the farms, our solution bypass the lack of road and cold storage infrastructures.

On the organizational hand, we designed an ecosystem which consist of partenering with other stakeholders in the food value chain in order to make sure small farmers get fair prices for their crops and the end products are sold on local, national or international markets. The ecosystem partners will include government agencies, food processors, farmers, end products distributors, waste management companies, NGOs, etc.

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?

Our number one targetted beneficiaries are small farmers.

As the son of small farmers from Cameroon, I know much of their needs. As a company, we've done or ordered 4 missions in our pilot country (Ivory Coast) and study all the stakeholders thoroughly in order to understand their needs (fruits and vegetable farmers, food processors, food distributors, NGOs, cooperatives and goverment agencies. In addition to getting their needs, we got useful inputs to improve our solution.

Small farmers needs are:

To Get crops out of its landlocked farms,
To Sell all crops not needed for family consumption,
To Sell crops at a price high enough to pay for expenses and get profit to live decently.

Our solution adresses these needs in the following ways:

Small farmers can easily carry their crops to the mini-factory and
get they shelf life extended so they won't be in a hurry to sell (at low
price) anymore.
Thanks to our distributors partners, we will actually widen small farmers productions' market to national and international markets in addition to they current local market.

Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Improve supply chain practices to reduce food loss, scale new business models for producer-market connections, and create low-carbon cold chains

Explain how the problem, your solution, and your solution’s target population relate to the Challenge and your selected dimension.

Moving processing to farms is a way to:

improve supply chain. For a given distance between the farms as the customers in the cities, we reduce the distance fragile fresh crops have to travel and increase the distance stabilized and easy-to-pack end products travel.
remove/reduce the need for cold storage

Bringing together the farmers, food processors and end products ditributors favor producer-market connections.

In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?

Grenoble, France

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Prototype: A venture or organization building and testing its product, service, or business model

Who is the primary delegate for your solution?

Victor NONO