MIT spinout Safi Organics makes use of crop residue to make natural fertilizer to assist rural farmers in Kenya enhance the yield of their farmlands. Credit score: Courtesy of Safi Organics
MIT spinout Safi Organics makes use of farmers’ crop residue to make an natural fertilizer that may improve yields and enhance soil well being.
Most industrial fertilizer travels a good distance earlier than it reaches rural farmers in Kenya. Transportation prices drive many farmers to depend on low cost, artificial fertilizers, which might result in the acidification and degradation of their soil over time.
The state of affairs quantities to a multigenerational disaster as elders have watched their crop yields dwindle over the course of a long time.
Now Safi Organics is utilizing a know-how honed at MIT’s D-Lab to make natural fertilizer that may assist restore such farmlands. The fertilizer is made domestically utilizing the residue from crops after harvest.
Safi buys crop residue like rice husks from the farmers and processes it close by earlier than promoting it again to farmers at aggressive costs. The corporate says its fertilizer has been proven to scale back the acidification of soil and improve crop yields by as much as 30 p.c after a single planting cycle.
Right this moment every of Safi’s amenities can produce fertilizer for 1000's of farmers as much as 20 miles away. Moreover, as a result of Safi’s biochar is wealthy in inert carbon, when it’s used as fertilizer, it's sequestering carbon from the environment. Credit score: Courtesy of Safi Organics
That’s a life-changing improve for farmers who depend on their crops to outlive. Farmers have used the extra crop gross sales to feed their households, ship their kids to high school, and acquire monetary independence.
“Safi is decentralizing fertilizer manufacturing such that it may be carried out in rural villages for the primary time,” Safi co-founder and chief know-how officer Kevin Kung SM ’13, PhD ’17 says.
The corporate has been working with farmers in Kenya since 2015. Greater than 5,000 farmers have bought Safi Organics’ fertilizer to this point. Kung says these farmers have reported a complete improve of $800,000 in earnings from elevated crop yields.
Now Safi is in search of to deliver its mannequin to India and different elements of Sub-Saharan Africa.
An extended journey
By the top of 2012, Kung had spent upward of three years on a analysis undertaking to show natural waste like crop residue from villages in Africa into charcoal for cooking gasoline. Over the course of these efforts, Kung obtained help from the Priscilla King Grey Public Service Fellowship, the MIT Tata Middle, the MIT Legatum Middle, and the MIT IDEAS Social Innovation Problem program.
Sadly, a sequence of failed pilot initiatives left him trying to find a sustainable enterprise mannequin as his workforce of MIT college students slowly disbanded. So Kung determined to make use of a few of his funding to journey to Kenya in the summertime of 2013 and companion with a neighborhood collaborator.
After making a job description, he was contacted by an agribusiness supervisor named Samuel Rigu. With Kung’s PhD work ongoing, he employed Rigu to run operations in Kenya as he returned to MIT on the finish of the summer season.
Quickly after Rigu started heading the undertaking, Kung started to understand his enterprise thoughts.
Rigu discovered that the charcoal they have been making is also used as fertilizer for rising crops if mixed with different vitamins. The epiphany paved the way in which for localized fertilizer manufacturing that will supply benefits over the excessive value of imported artificial fertilizers.
Rigu knew the draw back of low cost, artificial fertilizers nicely: He’d grown up in a poor rural farming neighborhood and remembered his grandmother weeping as she spoke in regards to the household’s land step by step dropping its vitality.
Kung was skeptical about producing fertilizer, however Rigu satisfied him to check out the concept with a small group of farmers. When harvest season got here, a number of the farmers utilizing the formulation almost doubled their yields (pH checks later confirmed the fertilizer helped fight the acidification brought on by different farming strategies). Rigu and Kung watched with amazement as the additional revenue set off ripple results in the neighborhood: Impoverished farmers used the additional funds to ship their kids to high school and additional enhance their farms.
The founders determined to arrange an organization promoting the soil formulation. They referred to as it Safi Organics.
Right this moment every of Safi’s manufacturing amenities can present fertilizer for 1000's of farmers as much as 20 miles away. Moreover, as a result of Safi’s biochar is wealthy in inert carbon, when it’s used as fertilizer, it's sequestering carbon from the environment.
In the meantime, Kung’s PhD developed right into a undertaking to construct low-cost, transportable biomass conversion methods to be deployed in rural areas just like the small farms Safi works with. He says his involvement with Safi helped maintain his PhD work related to real-world challenges.
“[Safi] began as a MIT undertaking,” Kung says. “However we needed to discover ways to have interaction native companions and acknowledge that generally they'll change into the champions of those initiatives, not essentially us, they usually’ll have the ultimate say within the path of issues.”
Partnerships for impression
Provide chain disruptions brought on by Covid-19 have made Safi’s domestically made fertilizer a significant a part of farmers’ lives. Kung says the corporate bought greater than 40 tons of fertilizer final yr alone.
This yr Safi’s workforce is hoping to deliver its mannequin to different elements of the world the place rural farmers are overpaying for reasonable fertilizers. The corporate is starting research in Tanzania and Uganda to see if native companions can get up sustainable companies on their very own. The mannequin can be being replicated by one other group in India with farmers in northern Punjab, who've several types of crop residue to course of.
For Kung, Safi’s success has proven the worth of empowering native companions to make enterprise selections for the communities they know so nicely.
“I used to be initially fairly skeptical of the whole thought [of pivoting to fertilizer],” Kung says. “I didn’t suppose it was possible. However the native workforce actually proved me mistaken and has validated the improved yield and the impression on farmers. For me, it’s been an inspiring journey.”
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