Joint Organic Aquaponics

Humans have degraded over 75 percent of the Earth’s land area, and 35 percent of fish stocks are over harvested. As our water sources continue to deplete and are currently containing more plastics than fish, the world population expected to reach nine billion by 2050 meaning that each year there is 75 million more people to feed from our limited agricultural land that has been hit by unfavourable weather, droughts and floods due to climate change. The rising standards of living and the technological revolution are opening the eyes of millions across the African continent to join the high-consuming middle class.

Despite Uganda being one of the biggest fish producers in East Africa, in 2019 alone, it imported fish products from Asia especially from China worth an estimated 13 million dollars due to the very high demand from Ugandan consumers, who demand more fish products each year. Furthermore, in my community many households do not have sufficient land, water and resources to sustainably grow their own food. Farmers also do not have innovative technology and cost-effective food production systems that utilize the limited water and space efficiently. 

Our solution is Aquaponics. Aquaponics is the cultivating of fish, fruits and vegetables together in a constructed, recirculating ecosystem utilizing natural bacterial cycles to convert fish waste to plant nutrients in a symbiotic environment. Aquaponic systems are 70% more productive and use up to 90% less water than conventional gardens. Other advantages include no weeds, organic yields, fewer pests, and no fertilizers are required.

Our goal is to build our aquaponic systems using recycled materials already available in the local communities and use bamboo as a building material for our media based and deep water culture aquaponic systems. Bamboo is a unique natural material that grows fast, can reach maturity within 3 years, when harvested another shoot emerges from the same plant and is readily available in most rural african communities. We hope to design and construct bamboo based aquaponic systems and further train our local communities how to economically build one such system with a low carbon footprint. Our aquaponics farm has so far received a lot of interest and has motivated many of the 78% of youths to involve agriculture which will create more employment opportunities. Through the trainings and workshops, we plan to offer our system designs to over 5,000 individuals, to produce 3,000 Tilapias,  together with 5,000 organic vegetable plants in our 2-acre organic farm in the next 5 years.  

Our solution plans to train 5,000 individuals in our local communities in the next 5 years. We target working with small households and smallholder farmers especially women that are unemployed, do not have enough space to produce food for their families and are willing to learn a new way of sustainable farming and we plan to offer them after sale services for the system designs and market access for their aquaponic products. We believe this solution will empower and motive them to use the inexpensive resources such as bamboo that are renewable and already available to them to grow both fish and vegetables thus providing them with nutritious food that is essential for a balanced diet. This will also  provide an extra income to them and their families thereby improving their standards of living. 

Our objective is to impact over 5,000 individuals in the next 5 years and with our business model that enables us to provide both fish and vegetables grown sustainably as well as organic farming trainings and sell of aquaponic systems to households. We hope to contribute significantly to the development of sustainable food production in rural areas and this would be possible because of our diverse and experienced team that is dedicated to using innovative solutions to solve food problems in rural communities. We are currently doing market research in Kimwanyi, Wakiso district and through this we have managed to work closely with the community leaders and members to brainstorm and explore the potential solutions to the problems not only in this community but as well as the whole of Uganda. Our aquaponic farming technique is 70 % more productive, water efficient and feasible on small scale for farmers with very less space, limited water, and unfertile soil. 90% of the individuals reached through our surveys indicate willingness to adopt our aquaponic systems of farming regardless that is a relatively new technique. Our team understands that this presents challenges ahead and we committed to working together to solve these problems and that will be possible thanks to our great teamwork, ambition and drive. 

We believe that Solve can provide us with support in different areas such as technical and product market analysis which is vital to ensure the success of our business. Some of the challenges we are facing are relating to  COVID 19 which destabilized our operations and has presented a challenge of higher costs of the materials, their delivery and increased labor costs, lack of clear information online about other aquaponic farms in Uganda as well as the contact details of aquaculture and aquaponic equipment suppliers has delayed operations and extended the time required to reach out to all the suppliers needed, the individuals interested in aquaponics are from different parts of the country and majority do not have stable access to internet, this has made it difficult to offer group trainings and increased the cost of these trainings, farm visits and consultations and the other challenge has been correctly determining the total cost for setting up these systems in Uganda that is affordable for most individuals who have consulted with us. 

We believe Solve uses an holistic business development approach that would be beneficial to the success of our business through the insights and the vast experience that the Solve mentors and team have. These would all be crucial to the acceleration of our solution to the next level of business scaling and growth. 

The use of bamboo as a a sustainable aquaponic construction material available in the local communities would greatly reduce the cost of construction of these systems. Our solution also offers after sale services and market access to those individuals who grow food sustainably using our aquaponic system designs. Our unique benefits would encourage more people to adopt aquaponic systems of production that utilize bamboo. The ability to be able to recycle the wastewater from the fish tanks, saving 90 % of it and using it as plant nutrients is also crucial in the adoption of such systems and improving the efficiency of our food production systems. Our solution contributes to the development of sustainable communities that understand the adverse effects of environmental degradation.    

Our specific impact goals focus on bringing the farmers and people in rural communities on board regarding sustainable living and the adoption of the new aquaponics system of farming. We hope to impact over 5,000 individuals especially women over the next five years through our organic farming trainings and workshops we hope to show the value of bamboo as a sustainable construction material. 

Over the next year, we hope to create atleast 100 empolyment opportunities for those that will help us in the business activities such as cutting the bamboo, system construction and as well as providing jobs to the suppliers of the inputs such as fish fingerlings and seedlings. 

One of the indicators for the success of the people is how many of the 5,000 individuals are able to adopt our systems, request for our after sale services and ensure self sustainability of their families after taking our trainings in next 5 years. We hope to measure the success annually. 

The number of individuals able to use bamboo and many other recycled materials with lower carbon footprint that are readily available in the communities as resources for the construction of their bamboo aquaponics systems. 

We hope to measure the success of our business as well from the sales of our organic fish and vegetables that are sustainably grown on our 2 acre farm. 

One of the problems identified is the need of systems that can sustainably grow enough food for the growing population. Our solution focuses on reducing reliance on some of the existing food supply chains that use a large amount of fossil fuels in food transportation, do not offer fresh organic food and use excess water, land and chemicals . Our focus is on local sustainable food production especially in rural communities through the use of aquaponic systems would not only provide nutritious food but also offer a viable solution to households that cannot afford the high costs of imported food which will eventually create self sufficient communities thereby reducing some of the effects that climate change has had on our current agricultural model. 

Our solution is mostly based on some of the ancestral knowledge on how our natural ecosystems can sustain themselves. We use the benefit of naturally occurring nitrifying bacteria (Nitrobacter and Nitrosomonas) to convert the fish waste in form of ammonia to nitrates that act as the plant nutrients. We also use artificial intelligence in the sensors in our aquaponic systems such as temperature, pH, nitrates, nitrites and ammonia sensors, humidity levels, the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water and other controlled environment systems to monitor and regulate the maximum growth of both the fish and plants. 

Our team currently has representation of both male and female from 2 countries, Uganda and Zambia. We have people with different levels of education and different experiences in business, farming, information technology, and social sciences. For our operations in Zambia, we are collaborating with different stakeholders including the Campaign for female education (CAMFED Zambia), traditional leaders and women to secure our primary materials such as bamboo which will be incorporated in our plan to have sustainable material for constructing aquaponics systems at a low cost. We are also, working with women smallholder who are our main customers and first beneficiary of our trainings. 

Our team is also comprised of people of different age groups from 16 years to 50 years. This has enabled us to get a variety of perspectives from everyone on the team. We value equal treatment an everyones' opinion regardless of the age and background is equal on our team. 

JOA´s primary market for fish are the restaurants the sell sustainably grown fish. These are typically organic restaurants and shops whose customers that value the quality of their food.These restaurants need suppliers of the fish products to overcome the inconvenience of growing their own. 

The primary market for the vegetables is the restaurants that sell organic vegetables. Our deliveries are timely and in large quantities which meets the restaurants needs of good quality vegetables that are free of chemicals and do not require long time to receive the deliveries as they are locally produced. 

The primary market for the aquaponic systems is households and smallholder farmers. Many households and farmers who want to grow their own organic food of good quality are our market segment for our aquaponic design systems. These customers need efficient production systems that can utilize less space and save water. 

The secondary market for our fish, vegetables and aquaponic systems are our farm visitors. Sales also come from the visitors for example school and university students that visit our farms to learn about this sustainable way of farming. 

Our business model works in the following ways for our products: 

·       Fish

Business to Business (B2B) – 20 % profit margin 

Business to Consumers (B2C) – 30 % profit margin 

·       Vegetables

B2B – 20 % profit margin

B2C – 30 % profit margin

·       Aquaponic systems

B2B - 30 % profit margin

B2C - 40% profit margin

We plan to become financially sustainable by developing sales contracts with different restaurants, schools, universities, and individuals that are interested in buying our aquaponics fish, vegetables, and design systems.

We also intend to open farm tours, especially for schools and Universities since aquaponics offers a great learning opportunity for different fields including sustainable agriculture which will help us raise funds through these activities. In the long term, we hope to serve as a research and demonstration center for aquaponics systems of farming since this way of farming food is relatively new in both Uganda and Zambia we hope to develop and sustain our operations by charging a certain fee for researching at our farms. 

Our solution has so far received a 5,500 USD grant from the Mastercard Foundation Entrepreneurship Fund at EARTH University award to EARTH University alumni with social projects that are impacting their communities and a 5,615 USD grant from the Pestalozzi International Foundation (https://pestalozzi.org.uk/arno...)