Backpack Farm Agro Program Shifting Africa’s Smallholder Farmers from Aid to “Green” Agri-Preneurship
the Backpack Farm Agriculture Program (BPF) is designed as an all-in-one backpack packaged with all the essential green, agriculture inputs needed for small landholders to standardize both the quality and quantity of agriculture production during an annual growing season, to mirror semi-commercial rates of production helping to eliminate food insecurity in local, regional and export markets. More important, the biological farming model is enhanced by a comprehensive training program encompassing a physical nework of training farms and mobile (sms) tech support programs ensuring creation of long term relationships with individual smallholder farmers and their farming communities.
About You
About You
First Name
Rachel
Last Name
Zedeck
Facebook Profile
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Backpack-Farm/271255899020
About Your Organization
Organization Name
Backpack Farm Agriculture Program
Organization Website
Organization Phone
+254(0) 729498179
Organization Address
PO Box 3128
Organization Country
Kenya, NA
Country where this project is creating social impact
Kenya
Is your organization a
For‐profit
How long has your organization been operating?
1‐5 years
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Innovation
Entry Form title
Backpack Farm Agro Program Shifting Africa’s Smallholder Farmers from Aid to “Green” Agri-Preneurship
What change do you want to bring to the world?
the Backpack Farm Agriculture Program (BPF) is designed as an all-in-one backpack packaged with all the essential green, agriculture inputs needed for small landholders to standardize both the quality and quantity of agriculture production during an annual growing season, to mirror semi-commercial rates of production helping to eliminate food insecurity in local, regional and export markets. More important, the biological farming model is enhanced by a comprehensive training program encompassing a physical nework of training farms and mobile (sms) tech support programs ensuring creation of long term relationships with individual smallholder farmers and their farming communities.
What are the primary activities of your project?
The six core activities that support the BPF’s strategic mission include: (1) Package models of green agri-tech supporting more than 30 crop varieties leveraging biological farming inputs and drip irrigation that are affordable for farmers producing on less than 2 Acres of land. (2) Build training farms in rural Kenya to offer core capacity training and green agri-tech to smallholder farmers growing independently or within established value chains. (3) Develop and publish training materials that can be used by any organization working with smallholder farmers. (4) Develop policy papers influencing the international donor and commercial investment community to make ethical, sustainable and scalable investments into smallholder food production models. (5) Developing mobile (SMS) training and support tools to help support smallholder farmers in remote agriculture communities to enhance farmer capacity and open new markets of core cereals and commodity crops. (6) Expand the program into neighboring countries including South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda facilitating new production, value chains and regional tradability
What is innovative about your initiative? How is it a new contribution to the field?
The BPF Program is innovative for five reasons. (1) We operate as the first, commercial agro social enterprise in the East Africa Region. (2) We designed custom packaging of the most cutting-edge, biological farming inputs in the exact amounts needed by smallholder farmers to use on less than 2 acre of land making ensuring technology transfer and affordability. Packaging of products is as small as 5 grams ensures smallholder farmers can adopt new technologies directly impacting their yields while training decreases losses during harvest. (3) We are proving with both quantitative and qualitative analysis the impact of using green agri-tech and training can be successfully implemented by smallholder farmers. Not all are “last mile” and want to increase their income through primary food production. 4) we developed and are leveraging brand alliances with some of the largest agriculture conglomerates in the world including John Deere Water. By default we are building incentives for large multi-nationals to enter the BOP markets and invest in developing countries. (5) The integration of physical training and mobile tech support enhances both capacity and production rates while helping to market the brand. We are developing text based as well as 2D/3D animations in partnership with both Mercy Corp and the University of Illinois. These relationships demonstrate the ability to blend for profit social enterprise, non-profit and academic sectors into successful and cost effective ventures.
What stage is your project in?
Operating for 1‐5 years
Tell us about the community that you engage? eg. economic conditions, political structures, norms and values, demographic trends, history, and experience with engagement efforts.
The BPF program engages directly with smallholder farmers in rural farming communities in Kenya with more than 76% of its population engaged in rural agriculture. More important, Kenya’s largest contributor to the local GNP is agriculture primarily through horticulture and floriculture export but leveraging smallholder producers. According to various UN and NGO agencies, there are 21 million smallholder farmers in Kenya and more than 80-100 million in the East Africa region. They live in a variety of physical environments including mountainous, arid and semi-arid requiring operational flexibility. On average these farmers are only producing 15-20% of their land’s ability and lose up to 40-60% of their crops in post harvest loss.
The farmers targeted by the BPF program represent a diverse stratum of economic models from under $2 / day to more than more than the national household GDP of $2,500 USD / annum. But the common trend is women, who produce 80% of Kenya’s food.
Kenya has a long history engaging the aid community with more than 3,000 registered local and international NGOs. There is now a new focus on social enterprise highlighted by the launch of organizations like KSIX and East Africa Social Enterprise Network all working towards rural communities to invest in their own success.
Share the story of the founder and what inspired the founder to start this project
Rachel Zedeck, the Founder & Chief Catalyst of the BPF Program first arrived in Kenya in 2007 in transit to South Sudan. Before Africa, Rachel worked in a variety of post conflict countries including Kosovo, Israel, Jordan and Iraq. She has engaged in both the humanitarian and commercial investment in post conflict and developing regions. After working in Baghdad, she ventured to South Sudan in 2007. While standing on a runway watching Sudanese women carry 90 KG bags of food aid, nutritionally deficient and difficult to transport – often more than 25 KM back to a rural village; the Backpack Farm was born. She has built a team of technical expertise to continue the design evolution ensuring sustainable and scalable agriculture production models that can be practically adopted by smallholder farmers. She has translated this model into an innovate, for-profit social enterprise which continues to incubate new strategies and organizational synergies for support smallholder farmers.
Since 2007, Rachel has learned that good intentions and ambition do not equate to immediate success in Africa. She continues to learn, write and advocate about regional and global food security by discussing the challenges, risks and complementary strategies in rural agriculture development. She leads by example demonstrating the potential of how social capital must invest in leadership and take risks to help transform the lives of our poorest citizens. Her advocacy of smallholder farmers continues to show the world their ability to feed both Africa and the world.
Social Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
Please describe how your project has been successful and how that success is measured
To date, the project has focused on six primary goals: (1) Developing the technical design of biological inputs blending organic, non-organic and training to increase yields and reduce post harvest loss. (2) Secure technical partners and major brand alliances to help underwrite the costs of launching the BPF program. (3) packaging the technical design of inputs and the core backpack used for delivery in rural farming communities (4) designing and documenting a comprehensive training program inclusive of both products and core capacity materials (5) design and launch of the rural franchise program. This program includes a physical network of training farms underpinning the rural supply chain. (6) Initiating our first commercial projects impacting more than 5,000 farmers and highlighting the potential for community driven supply chains. We do collect household survey data from each farmer we supply or train. We hope to leverage commercial finance to enhance our reporting metrics. In June 2011, we will begin reporting on the farmers how sign up to use "KUZA Doctor," our mobile tech support tool.
How many people have been impacted by your project?
1,001- 10,000
How many people could be impacted by your project in the next three years?
More than 10,000
How will your project evolve over the next three years?
The Backpack Farm will focus on three goals. First, it will continue to streamline its existing distribution and training model into more rural farming communities with more than 100 full time training farms. By the end of Q2 2012, we plan to expand our operations into trial sites in South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. We have already identified project partners and land in South Sudan. Second, more than expanding physical infrastructure, increasing sales (cash flow) and financial sustainability, we will have expanded our training program with new manuals and development of mobile tech support. Finally, we will focus don policy with both local and international organizations to raise awareness and investment into smallholder production models for local, regional and export markets.
Sustainability
What barriers might hinder the success of your project and how do you plan to overcome them?
Currently, we have two major limitations. First is finance. We cannot expand our rural distribution and training program until we can build more farms, hire support staff and install more administrative infrastructure including reporting. In addition, we cannot explore marketing (promotion) programs without more finance. Second, we need to build our internal management team focusing specifically on business development and supply chain management. We plan to overcome these challenges by shopping for commercial finance. Money can not solve every problem but better cash flow does address our most immediate, operational risks.
Tell us about your partnerships
Our strategic partners who are all supplying us technical equipment and are all Kenyan owned and managed firms. Irrico International Ltd. Founded in 2002, a Kenyan owned and operated firm specializing in water technologies. The organization currently operates in seven (7) African countries to design & implement a variety of unique water-based platforms. Lachlan Kenya Founded in 2001, a Kenyan owned and operated firm actively educating and encouraging environmentally intelligent farming that meets and exceeds competitive expectations. Agri-Q Quest is Kenya’s leading soil and water testing laboratory in East Africa. The team specializes in accurate, fast and affordable analysis of farm soils, irrigation and drinking water. Sandstorm Kenya produces luxury tents for East Africa's leading safari camps and produce the PE Backpacks for BPF program. In total, these companies employ more than 100 employees.
Current annual budget of project, in US dollars
$50,001‐100,000
Explain your selections
The project was originally funded through personal investment of the Managing Director, Rachel Zedeck. An additional investment of $25,000 USD has been made by her family. She continues to invest the revenues the company earns through product sales and commercial consulting projects. The project has only received on grant of $5,000 USD after receiving the UNEP SEED Award as one of the world's top 30 eco-friendly social enterprises.
How do you plan to strengthen your project in the next three years?
The program plans to expand its existing network of franchise, training farmers from 20 sites in 2012 to more than 100 within the next 10 years. This will support interaction with approximately 10,000 – 25,000 individual farmers per annum providing training programs and access to green agri-tech. Most important, farmers will learn about water management and have the opportunity to purchase affordable and high quality drip irrigation products with the potential to increase their yields which reducing impact on local water eco-systems. The physical training infrastructure will be supported with the development of new cooperative partnerships with organizations working with smallholder farmers and the launch of sms (mobile) technical support tools.
Challenges
Which barriers to employment does your innovation address?
Please select up to three in order of relevancy to your project.
PRIMARY
Lack of skills/training
SECONDARY
Lack of visibility and investment
TERTIARY
Lack of access to information and networks
Please describe how your innovation specifically tackles the barriers listed above.
The BPF program addresses these 3 deficiencies directly. (1) The network of rural training farms provides farmers access more than 40 training classes enhancing their skills and boosting product. Training also increases efficiency. (2) By leveraging the BPF training farms and network, farmers can increase their access to wholesale markets and out-grower production companies investing in BPO production models. Exposure attracts commercial equity to finance smallholder farmers. By default both farmers and markets gain access to new information whether to build their technical capacity or to demonstrate the potential of new production models.
Are you trying to scale your organization or initiative?
If yes, please check up to three potential pathways in order of relevancy to you.
PRIMARY
Grown geographic reach: Within host country
SECONDARY
Enhanced existing impact through addition of complementary services
TERTIARY
Grown geographic reach: Multi-country
Please describe which of your growth activities are current or planned for the immediate future.
Growth is highlighted by 2 core activities. First, by end of 2011, we are currently expanding our network of franchise, training farms to access new communities of smallholder farmers. We have identified relationships with 3 community-based agriculture focused SACCOs and Trusts to partner with. These relationships ensure expansion and sustainability of the new sites by leveraging existing networks of more than 6,000 farmers. Second, in June 2011 we launch "KUZA Doctor" providing crop specific mobile tech support to smallholder farmers in both English and Swahili. The program will eventually support more than 20 crops and leverage a new JV with the University of Illinois (Urbana) and Scientific Animators without Borders to launch more than 40 2D/3D training animations via mobile phone.
Do you collaborate with any of the following: (Check all that apply)
Technology providers, NGOs/Nonprofits, For profit companies, Academia/universities.
If yes, how have these collaborations helped your innovation to succeed?
Our main objective of building collaborative relationships is to share information and build better tools to help smallholder farmers grow more food; 2 examples. First, we have successfully launched our 2011 (TOT) trainers manual for FREE. This manual includes material from a variety of NGOs and for-profit companies. Second, by working with the University of Illinois, we are developing the most innovative training materials available to smallholder farmers delivered via mobile phone. The program is not only affordable (in Swahili) but is being published on an open source database. We are not only working cooperatively but committed to sharing the fruits of our development to be used by other organizations working with smallholder farmers whether for profit, NGO, UN or academic.
 | 44 weeks agoRache Zedeck said: Mel... Yes, G-d does have a role to play especially in our communities who are very spiritual. But I am not "giving" them anything. ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 46 weeks agoMel Glazer said: Hi Hachel: As important as food is, you and your backpacks do even more... You give God's Kenyan children a feeling of self-respect, ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 46 weeks agoSol Garcia said: Rachel, your dedication to Backpack Farm and all that it stands for continues to impress me. I know that working in Kenya alone comes ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 46 weeks agoPeter Frykman said: Rachel and BPF clearly understand the importance of a market-based approach to building scalable solutions. Quality agricultural inputs ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 46 weeks agoRache Zedeck said: Alex.... I truly appreciate the positive words of support. Your work at Changents is so important in helping under-funded ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 46 weeks agoRache Zedeck said: Tim... I appreciate the feedback. One of my great challenges is still learning to communicate the mission and vision concisely. And ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 46 weeks agoRache Zedeck said: Fabiola Thank you for such positive words of endorsement. We've packaged not just inputs but center our program on communications ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 46 weeks agoFabiola Stevens said: I was first introduced to Backpack Farm (BPF) in 2009 and was immediately interested in knowing more. At the time I was living in ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 46 weeks agoAlex Hofmann said: Rachel, I have consistently been impressed with your leadership and vision in taking Backpack Farm from concept to reality. Your ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 46 weeks agoKevin William Lord Barry said: Often times there are severe moral problems with attempting to do "good" throughout the world. The primary example of this in the past ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
