Country: Kenya
Lead organisation: Farm to Feed
Founded as a COVID emergency relief program, the project grew to become a self-sustaining social enterprise focused on the reduction of food waste. They address this challenge by utilising a digital platform to connect buyers to farmers with imperfect and surplus food. This reduces food losses and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as improves food affordability for consumers and boosts farmers’ income. The food rescue solution helps farming communities deal with climate shocks and stresses. They provide fruit and vegetable farmers access to markets for foods at risk of being written off as a loss. Farm to Feed works to advance community resilience through cost-effective and sustainable practices in local agriculture. By giving value to food that did not have value before, Farm to Feed contributed to directly increasing farmer incomes.
Key progress highlights:
- Mobilised an investment of $ 694,385 through different funders.
- Farm to Feed Limited undertook market research into value addition, tapping into local and international knowledge and expertise, in order to understand domestic and export market trends and potential, and competitor landscape and barriers to entry.
- Supported 1500 people.
- Identified and selected processing methods, identified value chains with high occurrence of food loss, and successfully undertook a SWOT analysis for each processing method, while outlining food safety standards and requirements for different food processing methods:
- Garlic, potatoes and carrots selected for semi- processing (meets the requirements of addressing food loss incidences in these value chains whilst meeting B2B customer demands).
- Starting with fruit concentrates to address seasonal surplus whilst offering a product that is in demand amongst Kenya-based customers and interesting enough for potential off-takers outside of Kenya.
- Building operational experience first within Kenya whilst exploring potential buyers in the international market.