UPROOT Urban Farms

By 2050 global population is expected to reach 10 billion; Asia is expected to have the second largest growth, adding 750 million people. Current agriculture practices, which uses a lot of natural resources, is not enough to feed the world’s growing population. The need to produce high-nutrient, year round of produce has never been greater than before.

Our solution is to grow local, fresh, high-nutrient food for restaurants,hotels, and communities. How do we do it? Through UPROOT's Tech Driven GrowHubs, communal food production centers, that provide sustainable livelihood for our communities. Through our vegetable subscription we are able to make food more accessible and affordable to everyone. Creating a circular economy where our consumers, communities and the environment wins. Food supply is not just a problem in the Philippines, and we see a huge opportunity for our solution and impact to positively reach other countries that need it the most

As the world's population increases, it is expected that 68% of the population  will live in urban cities by 2050. Along with it brings a lot of challenges typical of such gentrification including congestion, safety concerns, lack of affordable housing, community displacement, and feeding a growing population.

Working with urban poor communities here in the Philippines, I found out the main cause of poverty and hunger in marginalised communities was because they had NO livelihood opportunity at all. Which often leads to this ugly cycle of poverty being passed on from generation to generation. So if you live below the poverty line in the Philippines, chances are100% of your daily income, which is equivalent to $3/day, goes to food alone. They often resort to rice and instant noodles, a popular dish to many households because its tasty and cheap. That is why malnutrition is very high, especially in children aged 5 years and below.

In UPROOT we do not just cultivate plants, we also cultivate lives. We work mostly with mothers living in marginalised communities, specially the housewives, because they often have free time between 11am-4pm, when their husband is at work and children are at school, and if you ask all of them, they would say that they want to earn extra income to help in their family's finances. We have been able to empower 24 mothers and provide them a sustainable income of $120/month from zero. We also work closely with them and give them additional trainings like Financial Education as well as technical and design thinking skills in the hopes that one day they will become entrepreneurs themselves. 

UPROOT provides marginalised communities Food Production Centers or “Grow Hubs”; The community grows high end produce for UPROOT; UPROOT buys the produce at a higher price compared to traders and middle men and then UPROOT provides access to market for the high nutrient produce through our vegetable subscription called Corporate2Cultivate, engaging socially aware corporations to provide their employees access to our healthy vegetables creating a circular economy where everybody – The Consumers, Our Communities, and the Environment wins. Incorporating the entire value chain from the product (Communities), management of the value chain (UPROOT) to the Market (Companies, Hotels, Restaurants)

Our subscribers don’t just buy our healthy produce, they also become part of the solution as well as play an integral role in the food value chain, through the vegetable subscription, they are able to provide sustainable livelihood to our communities, since launching C2C early this year, we have eliminated over 5,000 single use plastics that are normally used for vegetable packaging. 

UPROOT provides marginalized communities Food Production Centers or “Grow Hubs”; The community grows high end produce for UPROOT; UPROOT buys the produce at a higher price compared to traders and middle men and then UPROOT provides access to market for the high nutrient produce. Incorporating the entire value chain from the product (Communities), management of the value chain (UPROOT) to the Market (Hotels, Restaurants) 

 UPROOT is able to create value in 5 areas: 

 • Create Opportunities: Communities are provided livelihood opportunities, improving their economic lot at the same time address the nutritional problems of their family.  

 • Sustainable Food Production: High nutrient produce that is grown locally, using less resources while maximizing production. 

 • Create New Market: Sharing Economy 

 • Inclusive Business: Businesses supporting social agriprenuers at the same time provide these businesses fresh, delicious, nutritious produce harvested the same day it was ordered.  

 • Linking Value Chain: Minimizes food wastage and food miles. Lowering not just gas emissions but as well as costs for food transportation.

We grow MORE food using LESS resources, we achieve this by growing hyperlocal food in aquaponics efficiently, all year round, making prices of food stable.  

Through our Corporate2Cultivate Program, we make locally grown and high nutrition vegetables more accessible and available to a lot of people. C2C is a vegetable subscription that nourishes our subscribers as well as sustains the lives of our growers. Creating a circular economy as well as help improve workplace nutrition of our partner corporations. And by using simple back to basic packaging of banana leaves and basket weaves, we have been able to support the efforts of other social enterprises here in the Philippines to reduce and eliminate the use of single plastic packaging used for vegetables.

During our incubation with the Innovation for Social Impact Project (ISIP) we under went several impact management workshops and had a deep dive impact session with Rabayl Mirza, the Impact Management Specialist at the Business Call to Action, a UNDP initiative to accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. They provided us a framework that we can use to guide us in our impact management and help us better understand our impact as well as make better decisions based on data that we have gathered. They gave us tools to help in not just measuring our impact but also quantifying our actions both directly and indirectly to our stakeholders.  

We used the tools that were given to us to help us set our goals and activities with the outcome in mind. We were able to push through with our set activities with the knowledge that we know what outputs are required for us and the outcome as well as the end goal. The tools helped us map out what activities we needed to pursue and what to scrap, and also help us monitor our projects. One of them was the replication of our GrowHubs, communal food production centers that provide sustainable livelihood to the mothers from our community partners. 

We are currently serving a total of 284 monthly subscribers for our Vegetable Subscription (C2C) and we are currently empowering 24 mothers working in our GrowHubs and are delivering to 9 companies.

Our Goal by the end of the year is to increase our 284 subscribers to 1,000 monthly, as well as empower 100 mothers and impact 10 communities and have increased our partner companies from 9 to 100.

In 5 years we have increased our subscribers to 250,000 per month and working with over 100,000 mothers and 100 communities in the Philippines and partner with the top 1,000 companies in the Philippines. As well as have presence in Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Syria and other places where they are still struggling for food security.

Majority of the food in Metro Manila is imported hundreds of kilo meters away. The sad reality is the situation in Metro Manila is the same everywhere in the country, how ironic because we are considered an agriculture country yet we import almost 80% of our food. And due to climate change we are faced with limited to no supply at all, compromising prices and food security. Our goal is to democratise food for everyone by creating GrowHubs or communal food production centers in local communities and provide them access to market through our vegetable subscription program. The great thing about this initiative is that people are more educated on what they eat and how it affects their health, so we don't just help our beneficiaries we are actually providing value to a lot of our customers that is why we have seen a 30% month on month growth of our subscribers. And we have replicated our GrowHub from 1 to 4 already. 

Our goal in the next 5 years is to produce 100 tons of High value crops all over the Philippines, providing fresh and high nutrient vegetables access to over 250,000 employees as well as empowering 100,000 mothers and partnered with the top 1,000 corporations in the Philippines.

Ease of doing business here in the Philippines remains a constant problem not just with us but with a lot of social enterprises as well. From registration to regulation, unfortunately our government is not start up friendly. 

Legal has also been quite a challenge for us, so we are looking for a lawyer that can be part of our team as well. 

Also we want to hit critical mass in terms of our vegetable subscription. We want to increase our current 280+ subscribers to 1,000 monthly by the end of the year. It is doable as we have started to meet with different HR departments of large corporations. As the demand side increases, we also need to increase the supply side. And that is what we are actually doing by deploying another 4 growhubs in the next few months, but building growhubs takes time, and for us that will be a constant challenge as we grow the subscription.

Lastly is the market barriers in other countries that we want to expand to. Although there have been offers to expand to Taiwan, Japan and Singapore we are not really sure how serious or to what extent they are willing to offer.

Unfortunately, with regards to registrations and regulations we cannot do anything about it, but just abide and really hope the new congress would pass start up friendly bills and measures that will spur more people to create new businesses.

For the legal part, we are talking to several law firms that have expressed interest to help us with our incorporation in exchange that they will have equity share in our business. For us it is a win win situation, as we now have someone to help us in all legal aspect and other business contracts.

We are deploying 4 additional growhubs in addition to the 2 that we currently have right now. It will help us accommodate the increase in the subscription, although opex is quite low, deployment of growhubs is capital intensive and costs a lot of money. So we are currently fund raising $100,000 to help us expand our team and get business dev and sales & marketing people to help us reach our target goals of 1,000 subscribers per month.

For the market barriers, we are hoping that the SOLVE Challenge will be able to help us connect with different stakeholders. We will also continuously communicate with the other companies and individuals that have expressed their interest in helping bring our solution to their respective countries.

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Fulltime: 4

Part time: 3

Advisors/Mentors: 4 – 2(Business) 1(Academe) 1(Development Sector)

Community Growers: 27 mothers

We are a group of very passionate and dedicated individuals trying to change the status quo of how we pack and grow the food that we eat. We are all parents and we want to leave a much better future to our children than what we have today. And we plan to do it inclusively, food is a very important part of our lives and our nation. The Philippines given our land and climate should be able to produce food on our own, but the reality is, we still import majority of our food affecting our food sovereignty and our country’s farmers which are one of the poorest sectors.

Robi Del Rosario - President/Founder. In charge of Marketing, Sales and Growth of UPROOT - Full time 

Alex Mangaoang - Operations/Co Founder. In charge of operations and administration.- Full time 

Maya Gabunales-Barol - Sustainability Officer/Co Founder. She is incharge of community engagement and other projects. - Full Time

Luis Arellano - Agritech, in charge of growing and designing of grow hubs. - Part time

Herbet Bactong - CTO, he is in charge of developing our UPROOT platform to link our communities to businesses - 20 years in the Tech industry.

We have 24 mothers that are working with us in our growhubs.

We also have 4 advisors who are very well respected individuals in their respective industries who continuously help, guide, and mentor us. 

We work mostly with foundations; we are currently partnered with 2 of the largest corporations in the Philippines BPI Foundation (Banking) and San Miguel Foundation (Conglomerate) This is for our Corporate2Cultivate campaign which engages socially aware corporations to provide their employees access to our healthy vegetable subscription. We are also talking with several Multi-National Companies like Unilever, Coke. C2C creates a circular economy through our vegetable subscription, our subscribers don’t just buy our healthy produce, they also become part of the solution as well as play an integral role in the food value chain, through the vegetable subscription, they are able to provide sustainable livelihood to our communities, since launching C2C early this year, we have eliminated over 5,000 single use plastics that are normally used for vegetable packaging. 

(B2B2C) Corporate2Cultivate engages socially aware corporations to become part of the food system by allowing their employees to sign up to our weekly vegetable bayong subscriptions and provide a sustainable livelihood to local communities across metro manila.

(B2B) We also have our enterprise model where we design and build urban farming systems to establishments such as hotels, restaurants and offices.

(B2C) Part of our business roadmap as well is to open up our vegetable subscription to individuals as we have getting a lot of inquiries how they can avail of our C2C.

Beneficiaries – Mothers in urban poor communities that work in our growhubs. We provide them a sustainable livelihood through our vegetable subscription.

At current state, UPROOT is already a profitable business, although we have been in operation for almost 3 years, it was just this year that we got the right product fit for us, which is our Corporate2Cultivate Campaign of vegetable subscription. We are currently earning an average of $4,000/month with over 280 subscribers earning a net profit of 30%. Each healthy basket of vegetable costs $14. Every since launching C2C we have seen a 30% growth in our monthly subscribers. We plan to increase our monthly subscribers to 1,000 per month by the end of the year and 2,000/month by 2020. We will be able to achieve this through phase 2 of C2C. We are currently talking with HR departments of different corporations to include our vegetable subscription as part of their employee benefit packages. Normally employees have a rice subsidy from their employers,and we conduct feasibility studies to understand employee behaviours if they want our vegetable subscription to be a part of their employee benefits.

More than the chance to receive funding, mentorship, technical expertise, media, business and entrepreneurship training, we want to be a part of the SOLVE Challenge 2019 because we feel it will bring tremendous value to our organization and help us scale our solution and impact in other countries.

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Multi-National Corporations and organizations that need access to our healthy vegetable subscription. 

Socially aware Corporations that want to partner with us for their CSR activities and projects. We will provide them a sustainable livelihood for their communities that does not become a dole out project.

Micro Financing Institutions that help finance small holder farmers and communities. (Grameen)

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UPROOT provides marginalised communities Food Production Centers or “Grow Hubs”; The community grows high end produce for UPROOT; UPROOT buys the produce at a higher price compared to traders and middle men and then UPROOT provides access to market for the high nutrient produce. Incorporating the entire value chain from the product (Communities), management of the value chain (UPROOT) to the Market (Hotels, Restaurants) 

 UPROOT is able to create value in 5 areas: 

 • Create Opportunities: Communities are provided livelihood opportunities, improving their economic lot at the same time address the nutritional problems of their family.  

 • Sustainable Food Production: High nutrient produce that is grown locally, using less resources while maximizing production. 

 • Create New Market: Sharing Economy 

 • Inclusive Business: Businesses supporting social agriprenuers at the same time provide these businesses fresh, delicious, nutritious produce harvested the same day it was ordered.  

 • Linking Value Chain: Minimizes food wastage and food miles. Lowering not just gas emissions but as well as costs for food transportation.

We work mostly with mothers in the communities that we partner with. Specially the housewives, because they are usually the ones in charge of budgeting the household expenses, we also found out that they usually have free time from 11am-3pm (when their husband is at work, and children are at school) and if you ask each and one of them they will all say that they want to earn and help in the family's finance not just in budgeting. If we win this prize, it will be used to provide more technical skills and design thinking training and workshops in the hopes that they will become entrepreneurs when the time comes that they can start their own business. 

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