Cold Storage Warehouse for Horticultural Products.

In Uganda, farmers and food supply chain actors are affected by post-harvest losses. This spoilage is caused by high ambient temperature and humidity, which accelerates the natural decay of agricultural produce.

The lack of suitable, well-designed on-farm and off-farm storage facilities, together with unreliable electricity supply restrains small scale farmers and other food supply chain actors from extending the shelf life of crops. Ugandan smallholder farmers and food supply chain actors produce 15 million metric tons of fresh fruits and vegetables worth US$ 850 million per year, of which an average of 45% of vegetables and 35% of fruits are lost after harvest. While terrible on its own, rotting food also produces methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

My organisation builds and operates commercial cold storage solutions for fruits and vegetables in Uganda. This solution we call Cool Harvests Warehouse is an off-taker component of Fair Future Farmers Foundation. It is deployed in rural Agro-communities, farm clusters, and food aggregation centers in order to prevent food spoilage and waste. Farmers and vendors are free to visit any of our cold storage facilities and store their perishable goods. We operate a cooling as a service model so they merely have to pay to use the cooling solutions daily, weekly or monthly. Our cold rooms can increase the shelf life of fruits and vegetables from a few hours up to 30days, reduce carbon emissions by 8% and increase farmers income by 30%.

Every commercial cold storage facility we operate is also a fresh produce aggregation center. Hence, we are strategically positioned to offer procurement as a service to food businesses, restaurants, processors or any individual who requires consistent supply of temperature sensitive farm produce in huge volumes. This prevents surplus food in the first mile aggregation centers while there is scarcity in non food producing areas.

Food businesses can order fresh produce from farmers in rural communities through us and we ensure that the produce gets to its final destination at the expected quality. This is possible because we provide cold storage and transport services that helps prevent spoilage and maintain quality from farm to table.

By doing this, the fruits and vegetable harvests will be improved from a few hours to 30days, greenhouse emissions will be reduced by 8% and farmers annual income increased by 30%.

We are a team of four professionals and passionate farmers. Before starting Fair Future Farmers Foundation, we were involved in commercial tomato farming where we experienced the challenges of spoilage due to lack of cold storage facilities. In 2021,we engaged farmers who were facing similar challenge through surveys and village meetings with the purpose of coming up with the model that would effectively provide access to cold storage facilities for keeping their produce fresh for market. This gave us access to genuine farmers who contributed a lot inform of knowledge and technical advice to enable us to start our operations in mid 2022. Now we are working with over 50 farmers in rural villages and serving over 200 customers in semi-urban and urban centers.

50 smallholder farmers

The reason why I want to become a solver is to get the most valuable exposure and experience while learning under the guidance and mentorship of an experienced innovators and experts. I also want to gain new insights and perspectives while also getting the opportunity to meet other experts in the field. I also want to win the solver fund to help me to purchase farmers tomato produce, store them in our cold warehouse and sell them to our customers when prices are high. If I win solver fund, i will serve 100 more farmers. I will also create 40 more jobs for women as the they will be employed as tomato cleaners, sorters and in packaging. Other more 40 jobs as part-time or temporary Market Managers. My innovation will also save at least three tons of tomato produce every day and make 120 tons of high-quality tomatoes available for local consumption every single day.

Our solution is 100% solar-powered as it has been optimized for off-grid rural environments where most small farms are located. However, they are also deployed in urban environments where electricity bills may be too expensive for farmers and vendors. Up to 90% of Operational costs for commercial cold storage solutions go into energy bills. This high operational cost is why small farmers and vendors do not invest in cold storage. Powering the Cool Harvests warehouse with off-grid solar significantly drives down operational costs. Hence, the shelf life of perishable agricultural products is improved without incurring huge operational costs.

In the next one year, Fair Future Farmers Foundation will be serving serving 1000 farmers, retailers and wholesalers using 5 installed cold storage warehouses in farms, aggregation centres and markets within the Southwestern Uganda and Kampala capital city. We expect to be having 30 cold storage facilities in the next five years serving about 10,000 farmers, retailers and wholesalers across the country. This will increase the household income of 10.000 small farmers, retailers and wholesalers by 50%, an additional US$60 to the previous US$60 earned, making their monthly income a total of US$120, simply by eliminating the previous 40% food loss; create about 120 jobs for women and youths, by recruiting and training them to work as cold warehouse operators and market managers in markets and farm clusters; increase the quality of 20,000 tons of fresh fruits and vegetables, ensuring food safety by reducing exposure to harsh direct sunlight, chemical, bacterial and mycotoxin contamination, eliminating rapid rotting. This will make 20,000 tons of nutritious food available for local consumption and save an estimated 462,528kg of CO2 emissions with an annual energy consumption reduction of 547kWh.

We will measure our impact through the number of farmers using our storage facilities, quantity of fruits and vegetable produce stored at our facility, percentage change in food wastage, percentage change in farmers income and percentage reduction on greenhouse emissions. Also the number of jobs created and percentage change in farmers joining fruit and vegetable farming.

Our cold storage system is a modular, solar-powered walk-in cold rooms that provides  24/7 off-grid storage and preservation of fruits and vegetables. They are installed near the farms within the reach of farmers. Fresh produce are placed in clean plastic crates and these crates are stacked inside the cold room. Cold room  temperature of 5°C extends the freshness of fruits and vegetables to about 30 days instead of 2 days without refrigeration.

The exterior dimensions are : L x W x H: 10’ x 10’ x 7’. The stainless floor is made with 0.8 – 1mm aluminum. The energy efficient  monoblock refrigeration unit with friendly R290 Propane refrigerant, is connected to a set of inverters and batteries that supplies energy. These batteries are charged by solar panels, generating about 5.7 kwh of energy. Each Hub contains approximately 2–3 tons of perishable food arranged in at least 150 units of 30kg plastic crates stacked on the floor. This cold storage system is guaranteed to provide autonomous refrigeration 24/7 without grid connection. The daily cooling temperature is 5° Celsius and the cold room’s unique safety door efficiently keeps cold air inside. The area where the system is installed have highly efficient security, supplemented by our company’s security, as needed.

Our technology system also has Remote Control Platform for enabling us to check, record, and change the refrigeration temperatures in Cold storage facility by a Smartphone Application. Smartphone Application also allows us to check and control the cold storage temperature anytime and anywhere without being on-site. Using the Internet, transferring the data in the Cloud server, Connecting to Machine to Smartphone Application, we can check and our cold storage facility status by phone and ensuring it’s running well.

We have a gender inclusive team of four passionate farmers and professionals dedicated to achieve our desired results. our team use a holacracy management structure where there is no hierarchy but distributed authority. This hierarchy allows everyone to be a leader responsible for his/her tasks. We are defined by our contributions not the positions we hold. This team includes;

Mutambi Samuel; a farmer, innovator, leading social entrepreneur and Founder/CEO of the Fair future Farmers Foundation.

Namanya Davis Khamutima; an experienced business development manager with extensive expertise in agribusiness startups, rural logistics, distribution, commercial strategy, contract negotiations, business processes, and team building.

Akinyi Joan; full stack software engineer and a skilled graphic designer who loves to create responsive, beautiful and user friendly functionalities with a demonstrated history of working in the I.T industry. She has a well versed knowledge of digital marketing and use of analytics tools to promote organization campaigns and search engine optimizations.

Natukunda Vastina; an agricultural engineer, with extensive knowledge and expertise in clean energy, solar cells, batteries, air conditioning, cold room design, and refrigeration. She holds a Higher National Diploma (HND) Agricultural Engineering, from the Makerere University, Uganda and a Technical Certificate in Electrical and Electronics Engineering. As TO, she designs, constructs, installs and maintains the solar powered storage freezers. She also trains technicians and operators on installation, maintenance and repair of the storage freezers.

Our business model is to buy tomatoes from the willing and desperate to sell farmers/traders/merchants that sell in papyrus baskets at reduced prices, and we will clean, re-pack in plastic crates, and preserve in our cold store overnight, for onward sale to bulk buyers at higher prices; this is our model on a daily basis.

We chose this model out of our findings from physical market investigation and the action research study of JICA revealing that the selling price of a 20-kg of tomatoes in plastic crate is at $5.30cents in Kampala market, while 20kg of the same tomatoes in papyrus basket is at $3.30cents. The price disparity is also the case for other agro- perishable produces. Also, the traders in the market would rather sell their tomatoes at reduced prices in the afternoon and evening than preserve overnight at a fee, because of their unfettered desire for cash.

The Fair Future Farmers Foundation's plan for becoming financially sustainable is an off-taker component registered as a business company (COOL HARVEST WAREHOUSE LTD)  allowing it to sign agreements with middle and large market buyers in Uganda as well as internationally. Through this off-taker company, Fair Future Farmers Foundation sign agreements with farmers to buy their produce, package, market, store and deliver them to customers. After selling farmers products, Fair Future Farmers Foundation uses profits to continue its operations.

At the beginning of 2023, with support from USAID Feed the Future Uganda, Inclusive Agricultural Markets Activity, Fair Future Farmers Foundation was able to install a cold storage facility for tomato produce storage facility near the farmers cluster in Rukungiri District. Fair Future Farmers Foundation through its off-taker component (COOL HARVEST WAREHOUSE LTD)  launched its tomato contract farming where it signed an agreement with 50 farmers in Rukungiri district in Uganda to guarantee it supply of tomato supply. Fair Future Farmers Foundation also guaranteed farmers to purchase their tomato produce. Farmers produced tomatoes and after harvest, farmers sent their produce to the Cool Harvest Warehouse where trained workers of Fair Future Farmers Foundation inspected and sorted it to ensure only quality tomatoes were sold to market. The tomato produce were then clean, packaged in plastic crates, stored in the cold storage warehouse and then delivered to the customers. This increased farmers income by 30%, reduced tomato wastage by 80% and reduced greenhouse emissions by 8% as there was no rotten tomatoes disposed to the ground. This has also attracted more 150 farmers this season who have approached us and are willing to sign the agreement with us to guarantee us supply of tomatoes.