TERRAMESA "From the earth to the table"

Problem. The problem we are solving is unemployment, an unfortunate consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Our solution is the creation of jobs on a massive scale, in the production of agricultural products. Essentially entrepreneurs will promote, plant, merchandise, and process agricultural products grown in their home or vacant vertical properties. 

Our solution is based on technology, using targeted e-commerce solutions where each geographical area has its own products and pricing. The international market will focus on a very short list of products. The logistics will be based on AI Pattern Recognition algorithms applied periodically to satellite photographs of the production fields.

Our solution will provide workers with a self-sustainable income that will positively change their quality of life. Our goal is to eventually extend our solution to Honduras as a whole. More importantly, this is an essential step to eradicate food scarcity and poverty.

The problem we are solving is UNEMPLOYMENT, the most dangerous consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The rate of unemployment in rural areas of Honduras is over 70%.

This rise in unemployment can lead to famine, food, and nutritional insecurity. On a macro level, high unemployment rates can be linked to social unrest, general insecurity, extreme poverty, violence. Situations such as these have led to the rise of Central American migration to the USA and Canada in recent years.

The problem involves a large number of people that directly and indirectly will be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in the area referred to as Honduras Dry Corridor. There is a calculated 1.3 million people in this area according to FAO (http://www.fao.org/3/a-br092e.pdf).

Our solution requires a supply and demand chain made up of a worker with a high salary job, a farmer making a profit, a buyer offering lower-cost, high-quality products to the consumers. Overall our initiative is capable of covering its start-up costs, becoming self-sustainable once it grows a minimum of 30% crops on each production cycle. 

Our solution is to create self-sustainable jobs and economic opportunities in rural areas of Honduras. 

Our solution TERRAMESA, refers to the pro from the process of "farm to table with no intermediaries". Our solution aims to produce food in the open field, low-cost greenhouses, vacated rental properties, yards using square foot garden processes. Since it is highly adaptable to different areas, it can be sold on local, regional, and international markets.

Our solution would promote opportunities for entrepreneurs that will handle production, training, and selling turnkey solutions ( i.e. starting kits, etc.) and value-added processing making chips from potato, sweet potato, malanga, plantain, in addition to making jam and hot sauce combinations (traditionally called encurtidos). The excess production of this entrepreneurial initiative will be sold through our network of local, regional, or international markets.

Our solution relies heavily on technology. The marketing will be done using targeted e-commerce sites, with local demand requirements and pricing. The initiative logistics will depend on keeping a detailed ledger of the production partners, localized using GPS, type of product, expected crop date, etc. This data will be verified monthly by using AI Pattern Recognition algorithms to satellite pictures of the different areas.

Our solution TERRAMESA will be aimed at agricultural workers, farmers, entrepreneurs, local, regional, and international consumers.

Agricultural workers are fighting for their lives in this pandemic and will continue to struggle in the post-pandemic recession. They need well paid, self-sustainable jobs so they are able to provide for the family needs such as essential healthcare, education, and food security.

Currently, farmers are considered the weakest link in the agricultural production value chain. It is an unfortunate reality that they are being paid an amount that barely covers their costs of living. Our solution will give the farmer a fair price for his products that will cover all costs involved in the production and leave enough to make a healthy income.

In essence, our initiative will provide a variety of areas where entrepreneurs can flourish such as making chips, jams, and popular hot sauce combinations. In addition, they could also get involved in new production systems like hydroponics, honey, and mushroom production. An added advantage of working with TERRAMESA is we provide a market for the products that cannot sell locally, thereby providing security to farmers.

The challenge we want to solve is ‘Good Jobs and Inclusive Entrepreneurship".

The problem we are solving is unemployment.

Our goal to create high salaries, self-sustainable jobs to workers and farmers. By providing opportunities for entrepreneurs and improving agricultural practices to produce food, we are addressing our challenge goals.

Initially, our target population will be the farmers and workers of the Dry Corridor Region of Honduras. This impoverished area is where our solution would startup. This will create a domino effect whereby the communities, the regions, and eventually the country as a whole could reap the positive benefits. 

The problem is how to make food production a self-sustainable initiative and, in the process, create jobs in a massive scale? Food production is a long-established job market, but we need more innovative solutions to increase profits.

Our real innovation was to find a way to make our solution self-sustainable, with revenue generation. This gives workers a good salary, the farmers a profit margin, our customers a lower price, and the buyer's sales with a higher profit margin. The cornerstone of our initiative "TERRAMESA" is that we will generate enough cash flow to become self-sustainable.

We see massive job creation as a consequence of finding serious, high price markets for our agricultural products.

This kind of initiative is usually a public sector, a government initiative in view that it has the ability to change the country paradigm. It will aid in positive development as it will change a poor, underdeveloped country to a country that has sufficient jobs for its citizens.

Our initiative will implement an innovative information platform for all decision making. This platform will create a ledger that holds current data on all crops growing with firm contracts or not.  We will practice ‘What If’ scenarios to have backup plans aiming at success and happy customers. This information will be based on GPS platforms and satellite photographs of the crops in the different stages of development in real-time. The data will also have current inventories from the entrepreneurship partners so marketing their products is done efficiently.

We will be using the following technological platforms:

1. The initiative needs to have an electronic web-based ledger, with a GPS map of all crops, with full information, type of product, date of planting, expected date of harvest, expected size of the harvest, and time dated report of all important events that have happened. Pattern Recognition algorithms will be applied monthly to satellite photographs to verify the information on the ledger.

2. Implement an e-commerce platform focused on the different regional areas that are going to be served. Each city and region will have its own set of products and pricing. Countries like El Salvador will be offered the products that have a high demand in that country, that are not necessarily the same products for Honduras, with its own pricing.

3. Create a native language App (Android and iOS) 

with the information mentioned in items 1 and 2, information available to the farmers for transparency. These Apps will have the proprietary software to make FREE phone calls to our farmers.

4. We will provide the entrepreneurs with the technology to efficiently create value-added products, like chips, jams, hot sauce, and more.

5. The initiative will require a 24/7 communication system with everybody involved.

6. With our partners Agricycle Global we will provide solar dehydration technology to women and children to use. 

• The ledger of all crops is something all countries want to develop, in order to grow more efficient crops. Some countries have succeeded like Holland and Switzerland, but in Latin America, it is usually a government priority that never is implemented.
• The e-commerce platform, we will use a commercially available platform, probably EcWid (http://www.terramesa.com) so there is a long track record.
• The native Android and iOS Apps are proven technologies. We have a native software that allows placing FREE Worldwide VOIP calls between registered members, which is PROPRIETARY TECHNOLOGY developed by 

• But the main question is why will our initiative be a success?

All business in the world primary goal is to make a profit. If the business does not make a profit, it is bound to fail.

Our initiative is based on that basic human rule, if we can make the farmers profitable, they will maximize their profits increasing their crops and needing to hire more workers, creating jobs.

The farmer's GREED for profit will create jobs that will solve many social problems in Honduras, and give food and nutritional security for the most vulnerable.

STATEMENT:

After the COVID19 pandemic, many of the people that live in Honduras are unemployed, and need a job to take care of their families.

ACTIVITIES:

-Secure orders for agricultural products from serous buyers abroad, with higher than local prices.

-Secure orders from the e-commerce platform.
 
-Give farmers the support and training needed to produce high quality agricultural products that comply with international requisites.
 
-Help farmers get the financing needed to process the crop.
 
-Close negotiations with commercial packers responsible for the selection, packing, shipping of the products.

OUTPUTS:

Oversee the shipping and receiving of many container loads of vegetable products.
 
Oversee that payment is secured from the buyers, and that the buyer is happy.
 
Oversee that the farmer has hired workers that are paid a fair salary for their work.
 
Make sure that the farmer repays the loans secured for the crop.
 
Make sure that the farmer is ready for a new cycle.

SHORT TERM OUTCOMES:

Food and nutritional security for the family.

Restore education for the children.

Health for the family.

Improve the housing conditions.

Positive local development for the community.

Positive National, Regional development for the country, region.

MID TERM OUTCOMES:

Give the workers financial and entrepreneurship guidance and support so they start a family business, buying land and planting crops so the family food security becomes independent of the local markets, living in a self production bubble. The family will produce eggs, vegetables, chicken meat, pig meat, sometimes even cow meat, and couldn't care less of the going price for those products in the local market, ensuring the family future food and nutritional security.

LONG TERM OUTCOMES:

Happy and healthy families.
 
Less violence.
 
Less social unrest.
 
Zero hunger.
 
Less migration.
 

MISSION:

Provide the people in Honduras a better, healthier, more educated life, ensuring their nutritional and food security in the future. 

Currently our pilot Program successfully provides service to 100 small local producers from Comayagua, Honduras. They grow usually a single product, consolidate quantities at the point of delivery, select the products that do not comply with the requisites and take them out, pack the selected products, and ship to the foreign buyers, by means of our partner Packer D’leite.

In one year, with the support of USAID project FINTRAC, we would like to increase this number to 2,000 out of the 16,000 small local producers supported and trained by USAID FINTRAC, on the production of colored peppers, cucumbers, tomato, coffee, and grains like corn, beans, and rice.

In five years we expect to be serving 100,000 small producers. Please note that Honduras has more than 90,000 small coffee producers that are organized, produce world quality coffee, and can use our market opportunities at any time.

With the support of the National Agrarian Institute (INA), we have identified 652 Dry Corridor' Farmer's organizations, with current legal status, with more than 104,000 hectares of land allocated by the government. This will be another starting point of our initiative.

Goals within a year.

Our goal is to have a completely self-sustainable initiative in 12 months, growing at a minimum rate of 30% every year thereafter. Output will be measured in the number of container loads successfully shipped and consolidated sales from the e-commerce platforms.

Our goal is to execute the  agreement we have with Publix Supermarkets of Florida, where Honduras agricultural products will be bought by the giant supermarket chain with priority, basing this action on humanitarian reasons and aiming to create jobs. This agreement was negotiated together with our partner the CrossRoads Alliance NGO from Florida.

Our goal is to be able to provide high paid jobs to anybody who is willing to learn the skills and technologies needed to compete in global markets in the future, either as a worker, farmer or entrepreneur.

Our goals within 5 years.

Our goal is to increase the economic opportunities of small-scale producers and entrepreneurs starting in the Dry Corridor of Honduras, especially women, youth, and marginalized (ethnic) groups living in poverty.

Our goal is to improve the quality of life and food security for the Initiative's workers and farmer's families in the future, through positive economic development for the individual, the rural community, the region, and finally the country.

Our goal is to eradicate poverty in Honduras, with jobs.

Legal barriers.

The initiative needs to be consistent with the national development strategies for the Honduras Dry Corridor. The Dry Corridor of Honduras includes 3.0 million hectares, of which 1.5 million is coniferous forest, a special ecosystem of great importance and potential agro-forestry initiatives and water production.

The initiative needs to comply with all guidelines of the Free Trade Agreement with Canada (FTA) and the Free Trade Agreement  (DR-CAFTA) with the USA, and national regulations related to the protection of the environment, gender equality, human rights and governance on processing the products that are being exported to the USA and Canada.

Financial barriers.

Initial High cost of Initiative. Initially, we need to cover the cost of setting up and implementing this initiative. The farmer needs financial support to plant the crop and survive the three months (average) cycle, to pay workers salaries, crop-related costs, fertilizer, etc. We have had positive talks with the Central American Bank ( http://www.bcie.org ) to provide a line of (fast) credit for the farmers on the initiative.

Cultural Barriers.

Another barrier will be the farmer, who in the past has been lied and taken advantage of by the intermediary agents buying their crops at the lowest possible price.  We need to change his attitude towards this opportunity.

Addressing legal barriers.

Our Initiative will be very careful to comply with the National Development Strategies for the Honduras Dry Corridor as specified in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by the government of Honduras in January 2017 and ratified in July 2018 referring to the specific goals of the Government to the different international donor’s projects.

With respect to the Free Trade Agreements, our exports need to comply with the different requirements of CAFTA and the  Free Trade Agreement with Canada,  in the areas of labor and environmental cooperation.

Addressing financial barriers.

We need to provide support to the farmer in all financial decisions he needs to make, with the goal of lowering the cost of things he has to buy for the crop. As an example, the price of a one-acre greenhouse in Honduras cost US$ 5,000, compared to $1Million in Canada. This price difference makes the Initiative financially feasible, low cost, fast implementation, efficient.

Addressing cultural barriers.

We believe we will win the trust of the farmer by always being straight with him, complying with all of the requirements needed efficiently and on time. To gain confidence for the initiative, we need to provide support to the farmer with low-cost loans, provide a database of available workers, buy supplies with group pricing, and work hard in order to successfully execute the contract by the foreign buyer.

We have employed 14 volunteers to this date.

1- 2 volunteers in Administration functions .

2- 1 volunteer as the entrepreneurial liaison.

3- 3 volunteers. For every product to be exported, we need to hire a minimum of 3 experts volunteers. We have selected 1 product. ( cucumbers)

4- 8 volunteers, 2 for every target market engaged San Pedro Sula, Tegucigalpa, Progreso and one regional market El Salvador.

We are best placed to deliver this solution because every one of our team looks at the problem and possible solutions with extreme passion; we want our rural workers to have a normal, dignified life, where their entire human rights, health, employment, education, etc. are provided, and their food and nutritional security is guaranteed.

At least one of our members is an Information Technology expert, with experience in the application of technological solutions to the food and nutritional insecurity problem. He also has experience in deploying applications for cellular phones.

Our team has several members that are or have been farmers, and their comments are based on experience.

One member of our team is an environmental expert with 40 years of experience in the rural areas of Honduras.

Our team also has members that have worked in the past looking for solutions on the famine situation of the Dry Corridor. They have the experience with the legislation applied to this area looking for solutions to the famine problem.

One member of our team has worked with workers organizations and knows which groups are ready to successfully fulfill serious orders to produce agricultural products.

1- We have partnered to do this project with the Daedalus Foundation.

The Daedalus Foundation ( http://www.thedaedalusfoundati... )  is an action-oriented, charitable organization that concentrates upon population-related matters. As our global population grows, many situations and events are greatly exaggerated by the absolute numbers of people involved. Daedalus has three primary mission areas: humanitarian assistance, disaster response, and poverty reduction. Those mission areas remain, but the activities of the Foundation have expanded to include formation of the Daedalus Institute, the Leading Edge Initiative, and the Descansa en Casa (Rest at Home) project. 

Accomplishing objectives in Daedalus' areas of interest depends upon myriad factors including: disaster risk reduction; enhanced disaster response preparedness; creation, maintenance, and restoration of community; and, sustainable, local economic growth.

2- We partner with Deleite Packers in Comayagua for the pilot program.

3- We have partnered with the USAID project FINTRAC (https://www.fintrac.com/projects/honduras) , that trains 16,000 small growers.

4- We have partnered with Agrarian National Institute (INA) (https://www.ina.hn/) for information and support on the 652 organized groups of farmers, with resources and government allocated land (104,000 hectares).

5- We partnered with CrossRoads Alliance and Ministries (https://www.crossroadsam.org/), a non governmental organization with offices in the USA and in Honduras.

6- We have partnered with AGRICYCLE GLOBAL form Milwaukee, Wisconsin to provide our initiative with solar food dehydrators.

The business model is a Market Intermediary. Provide services to farmers to help them access markets.

The revenue is generated by the huge difference between the  price that is paid to the farmer and the price the consumer pays at the supermarket. 

KEY PARTNERS

Canadian Farmers

PUBLIX

Shipping and Packing companies

Local farmers

Entrepreneurs

Workers

KEY ACTIVITIES

Create a catalog of products to export

Create a Geo located map of farmers

Sign agreements with strategic partners, i.e. packing companies

Use social networks to publicize the initiative

Organize local groups of farmers to sell locally

Develop and e-commerce web site for several regions with different products and pricing.

KEY RESOURCES

Optimize the productive cycle of each product

Connect workers with farmers

VALUE PROPOSITIONS

We are a commercial facilitator between large buyers and farmers and workers.

We have developed a job bank for the farmers to search for workers.

We provide support to the farmers.

We organize the workers on a skill based job bank.

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS

Personal assistance

Pro bono consulting

Collective innovation and creativity.

Transparency in business transactions.

Respect.

CHANNELS

Social Media

Web Page

Smartphone App

Massive communication platforms

Advertizing.

COST STRUCTURE.

Advertizing and Broadcasting.

Quality Control

Export processes

High skilled labor

Travel.

REVENUE STREAMS

Selling agricultural products to markets abroad.

Selling Agricultural products locally.

CUSTOMER SEGMENTS

Retail consumer stores, supermarkets etc.

Agricultural Product distribuitors.

Legal workers organizations.

The business model is a Market Intermediary. Provide services to farmers to help them access markets.

The secret to self-sustainability is the revenue generated by the huge difference between the price that is paid to the farmer in the field and the price the consumer pays at the supermarket.

For example, sweet potato.

The pound of sweet potato is paid to the farmer at $0.17 cents a pound. 

The supermarket sells it for $1.79 a pound. 

If we estimate the cost of transportation at $.20 a pound, the total cost would be $0.37 a pound CIF USA.

 The difference between the selling price and the cost in the supermarket is a whopping $1.42. 

This $1.42 difference could be used to pay the farmer a better price for the product, maybe $0.30 a pound.

So the final numbers:

Farmer is paid $0.30/lb (before was $0.17)

Transportation $0.20/lb

Our Initiative: $0.50/lb

Supermarket cost is $1.00/lb

Consumer cost is $1.49/lb (before was $1.79)

The revenue would depend on the products selected, the quantities processed. 

For example, a hectare of sweet potato will yield 65,000 lbs. 

If the Initiative makes $0.50/lb, the revenue for the Initiative will be US$ 32,500.00 per hectare.

I believe it is a privilege to be able to apply to MIT SOLVE.

Anything to do with MIT for me is special, in view that my grandfather, Ruben Bermudez Meza,  graduated in 1916 with a Bachelor's degree in Mining Engineering from MIT.

I was invited in 2008, by the Media Labs of MIT, to give a lecture to the Developmental Entrepreneurship Department, on my latest startup at that time, a project called “Alooo.com”, which was a platform focused on migrant workers and their transnational families, so they could communicate free of charge. Just as a note, in 2008 the universal way of communication was public telephones, there were cellular phones but they were expensive.

The presentation was a complete success and I came back to Honduras with a part-time job offer from MIT, that I regret not taking it.

I believe that winning this contest will give our project the validation required for the project to be implemented. Many other interested parties, like the Central American Bank ( http://www.bcie.org ), will have the confirmation needed to support it. This project is one of the rare cases where its focus is social work, food, and nutritional security to disadvantage people, but at the same time generating enough revenue to make it self sustainable.

Thank you for this opportunity.

Product/Service Distribution: How to find new Supermarkets interested in signing an agreement, based on humanitarian reasons, to buy Honduran products with priority.

Funding and revenue model: Experts in this important field are needed in order to help the initiative to grow.

Board members and advisors: Advisors are needed in different areas, from preparation, production, post production activities, financial, contacts etc..

Monitor and Evaluation: An Evaluation system needs to be implemented so the initiative has current information of the different services evaluated by experts that are monitoring it.

Marketing, Media and Exposure: Experts need to help us design information campaigns so the success is known and replicated.

For “TERRAMESA” to succeed globally, we need to partner with large retail food businesses, like PUBLIX Supermarkets. In the past, our organization has worked with supermarkets located in the US and if our solution was selected, we would reach out to our contacts with a formal proposal.

 International markets are an essential part of the TERRAMESA because it allows food to be sold to larger international markets at fair prices. The more we grow to address food scarcity, the bigger chance we can have positive sales revenues from local, regional, and international markets. Our initiative goals expand globally, as it will create jobs, revenues, and provide a surplus of food in our country, offsetting the food and nutritional insecurity present.

We will be generating substantial revenue flows. Keeping this in mind, we aim to reinvest in the initiative to make the production process easier and more efficient. This in turn will expand the TERRAMESA job market, expanding the economic opportunities to populations in need. We are open to any advice or guidance on how to re-invest our revenue and hopefully help the initiative grow.

Our "TERRAMESA" concept could be easily replicated, applied to empowered refugee camps for them to produce food to be sold in high priced markets to generate positive revenue, and also  the food they consume.

Jobs will be generated, personal pride will flourish, financial gain could be invested on other activities including education and health services.

Any situation were people are taken out of their normal habitat into restricted environments, will require jobs, paid activities, in our case to produce food, to be consumed internally in the refugee camp and the excess to be sold on a high-priced market.

"TERRAMESA" main goal is to create well paid jobs for people willing to work hard and learn the knowledge required to produce food. There is a famous kid with predictive powers who said: “if agriculture is not set right now, the lack of food is going to destroy the whole world”.

The logistics of our Initiative are based on using Pattern Recognition methods (also known as artificial intelligence) on satellite photographs, in order to confirm the status of the different crops in process supported by our initiative.

From these satellite photographs a ledger of all crops, part of our initiative or not, will be geo-located on a web map available to he public. This ledger will be created, using Pattern Recognition from the satellite photographs.

On a personal level, during my master degree in Information and Computer Science from Georgia Tech, I had the privileged of having as an advisor Dr. Winston Zunda in 1978, one of the most prestigious professors in the Artificial Intelligence, Pattern Recognition studies, that has a great influence on my work since.