The Problem
1. Food Security Threat
500 million smallholder farmers that are responsible for nearly 70% of the world’s food production are under threat because of poor yields due to high soil depletion of nutrients and lack of organic matter. This poses a serious food security threat while in contrast the world’s population is bulging.
2. Environmental Threat
Cattle manure deposited on pastures is the second largest source of GHG emissions after enteric methane and is responsible for 7% of agricultural emissions of Methane and Nitrous Oxide worldwide. Today nearly 200 million nomadic pastoralists globally keep cattle that produce high volumes of manure that goes to waste and remains unutilized because culturally they are only interested in cattle rearing for meat production. 1 Kilo of animal manure is associated with producing 7 kilos of carbon emissions. A typical pastoralist family produces 5,000 kilos of manure every month therefore this one family alone can contribute an equivalent of 35,000 CO2 emissions every month. The magnitude of uncollected cow manure in a pastoralist community of 100,000 households is therefore very significant.
Our solution
We are cognizant of the fact that soil is the largest land-based carbon sink, with the potential to store over Nine Gigatons of CO2 annually. We also know that well decomposed and stabilized animal manure is a highly nutritious source of organic matter that can significantly boost the productivity of smallholder farmers by up to 50%. Through our purchase of manure, nomadic women now have a new source of income that helps them buy food and take their kids to school.
Business Model
We source high volumes of animal manure from women in pastoral communities of Kenya. Once we buy from them depending on quantities, we transport the waste to our processing center. Here we process the raw manure and take it through our proprietary composting technology to produce an organic residue that is fine textured, odorless and low in moisture. This final residue is then ready for sell to farmers.We sell the compost in two ways; as loose compost in large volumes to commercial farmers or in packages of smaller quantities such as 90, 50, 35, 10 Kilos to small-scale farmers.
