We love a great story about an organization that’s really collaborating with native communities to learn each folks and planet. We sat down with Dr. Kevin Kung, to find out how he and his associate Samuel Rigu are altering lives in rural Kenya by creating carbon adverse fertilizers for small farming households. Assist their crowdfunding marketing campaign begin your vacation buying early with presents that give again – perks of donating embrace specialty Kenyan espresso, handcrafted sculptures and jewellery, and True Moringa oil in addition!
What made you resolve to begin Safi Organics?
Co-founder Samuel Rigu grew up in rural Kenya, and most of his members of the family and neighbors had been poor smallholder farmers. He vividly remembers that when he was a toddler, at some point he was along with his grandmother within the subject as she was harvesting some maize cobs, she stated, with tears in her eyes: “Son, twenty years in the past, we had been harvesting double of what we harvested this yr. I’m afraid that in twenty years, there will probably be no extra meals from this land for you.” This scared Samuel, and as he grew up, he knew that he needed to sort out this subject of long-term soil degradation and convey higher livelihood for smallholder farmers. Samuel proceeded to review Agribusiness on the College of Nairobi. Afterwards, because the supervisor of Turning Level Belief Farm, he turned the farm from a loss-making enterprise into profitability inside six months by coaching farmers to implement natural farming practices. By engaged on the Turning Level Farm, each harvest season he noticed piles of crop residues being burned within the open air. This gave the impression to be to be a waste, so he took an interest within the potential of using crop residues.
At the moment, as Samuel was doing analysis of his personal, he met Dr. Kevin Kung from Massachusetts Institute of Expertise (MIT), who was additionally serious about growing applied sciences to transform crop residues into numerous higher-value merchandise. So with Kevin as a technical co-founder, the duo first launched a enterprise (SafiCoils) in 2013 that transformed farmers’ residues into low-toxin mosquito coils, and bought multiple million of them out there. Finally, the enterprise was not profitable as a result of it couldn’t generate enough gross margin to maintain it at a significant scale. They then determined to pivot to exploring find out how to flip the identical residues right into a high-yield fertilizer that concurrently acts as a liming agent to counteract in opposition to the acid-related soil degradation. Over many seasons of trials with precise farmers, Samuel and Kevin developed a sequence of chemical recipes that full the nutrient. When mixed with the MIT know-how, the group realized that they now have a approach of decentralizing the fertilizer manufacturing on the village degree, and even custom-tailor the fertilizer traits on at an virtually single-farm granularity.
What makes your approach of doing enterprise distinctive?
Like True Moringa, we’re one of many few corporations that mix the precise mixture of cutting-edge know-how and intimate area people connection. We’re additionally one of many few corporations that consider that doing properly comes immediately from doing good.
Whereas our know-how relies on six years of PhD effort at MIT and 7 scientific publications, from our previous expertise, engineering design in abstraction from real-life finish person suggestions can typically be a misguided effort. That’s the reason earlier than we even started to design any superior know-how, we always sought enter from native smallholder farmers, beginning in 2011. Due to Samuel’s deep connection amongst Kenyan farmers, the group was in a position to acquire intimate insights into the native agricultural wants and challenges in a approach that few MIT researchers might entry. We then tried completely different variations of imperfect applied sciences to get to provide preliminary merchandise, a few of which failed. In the end, we produced an imperfect fertilizer product that, surprisingly, farmers appreciated a lot that they had been keen to miss the product’s flaws. The remainder of the enterprise was then constructed on this basis, of iterating and enhancing on the know-how and the product.
Secondly, to us, creating wealth is a needed facet of our enterprise, however it’s not enough. Due to this fact, from day one, we deliberately designed social and environmental impression into an integral a part of our enterprise. For a lot of social enterprises, there could also be a trade-off or pressure between profitability and impression. However for us, that’s not the case: the extra fertilizer we promote, the extra farmers we raise out of poverty, the extra land we restore, the extra carbon we sequester into the soil, and the extra revenue we make. It’s inconceivable to segregate impression from enterprise profitability in our case.
Inform us about one of many farmers you are working with
Meet Mr. Kibuchi, who has a rice farm close to Mwea. Over 15 years, he had seen his yield lower by virtually half. After utilizing our product, his enter prices remained constant, however he has seen his crop yield elevated by 30%, and web earnings elevated by 50%. This was enough to ship his two kids to highschool, and final yr, for him to afford a second-hand tractor for his farm. “With the Safi Sarvi fertilizer, I all the time have sufficient meals on the desk for my household,” he stated.
Inform us how the crowdfunding marketing campaign will take your venture to the subsequent degree
Up to now, by bootstrapping, we have now arrange a pilot village-based fertilizer manufacturing in Mwea that serves 2,500 farmers, most of whom are repeat clients. As of early 2019, we have now additionally demonstrated that this manufacturing has been financially worthwhile at a scale of 1 ton/day.
Lately, we obtained our first authorities tender: the Nakuru County Authorities desires us to provide $58,000 value of fertilizers to an extra 1,000 farmers in a ward in Nakuru County. It is a large progress for us in reaching scale and impression.
Nonetheless, there’s a catch: In Kenya, the traditional customary of presidency orders is for cost to comply with round 3 months after verified and documented product supply. To finance manufacturing to fulfill the order, we want a rise in our present working capital. To extend our manufacturing capability to satisfy anticipated future orders like this, we may even be implementing the latest manufacturing approach from MIT/Takachar. These actions require a complete of $25,000.
The funds we elevate by way of this marketing campaign will reside with us as an evergreen working capital, and can enable us to develop and fulfill different tenders and huge orders sooner or later. As soon as the funds have been obtained from this contract they are going to be reinvested within the enterprise to increase and therefore create extra impression.
The rest to share?
Kevin Kung from Safi Organics and Kwami Williams from True Moringa, had been classmates in Massachusetts Institute of Expertise (MIT) and labored on class tasks collectively. It was throughout a category known as D-Lab that introduced MIT college students to rural Ghana for a month. Immersing with rural farmers in Africa opened the eyes of each Kwami and Kevin. In Kwami’s case, he modified his profession trajectory from being a rocket scientist to being a social entrepreneur. In Kevin’s case, he acquired to know Samuel in Kenya and collectively co-founded Safi Organics. Now each corporations serve rural smallholder farmers in Africa in several methods.
