Solar Cool System (So-Cool) for Urban smallholder farmers’ produce – helping to connect smallholders to bulk buyers to foster inclusivity and reduce hunger

Steady power-supply is a major challenge for all businesses in Nigeria, irrespective of type/class. Agriculture remains Nigeria's economy keystone (over 210million population), despite oil exportations. Agriculture employs 40% Nigeria's labour force and covers 21%GDP, representing major livelihood source for many (World-bank, 2018; United-Nations, 2018).

Agriculturists exist in urban areas and rural areas and all lack power-supply and post-harvest storage systems/infrastructures. Fossil fuel powers their small-capacity storage units(refrigerators), usually in urban areas.

Currently, 88% Nigeria's farmers are smallholders who produce 90% of domestic-output but are only able to sell 26% (Nigeria's Agric Minister, Ogbeh,2018). Truthfully, Nigeria loses over 60% of produce to post-harvest impediments like lack of cooling/storage infrastructures despite having food insecurity causing circa-$7bn yearly food importation (Central Bank of Nigeria,2017).

For example, yearly tomato demand is over 2million-tons, but 700,000tons of the 1.5million-tons produced perish due to lack of preservation/storage (Nigeria Agriculture Ministry,2019). Similarly, fast-food chains complain of poultry scarcity while many smallholders lament poor poultry sales (Poultry-Worlds, 2018). While bulk-buyers struggle to find farm-produce locally and end-up importing, many smallholders cannot aggregate stock, locate/sell to these bulk-buyers.

This issue is compounded by constant-failing-power-supply and costly fossil fuel to power low-capacity storages(refrigerators). Consequently, 72% of Nigeria's smallholders live below the US$1.9/day poverty line (United-Nations Nigeria,2019).

Despite the ironic scenario, middlemen/agent-companies/wholesalers like LMD-Agro-Consultants have struggled in providing robust quantity to demanding bulk-buyers (e.g. food-factories, hotels,etc.) from smallholders' produce. Why?

On one hand, urban smallholders consistently complain lack of power and aggregation software/system for cooling infrastructure/storage that can support aggregation to middlemen/agent-companies/wholesalers desiring large stocks for their bulk-buyers. This means NGOs' (e.g., Youth Sustainable Development Network(YSDN)) push for cooperative-system-aggregation has faced the problem of earlier stocks perishing before later stocks/addition readiness during aggregation.

In contrast, bulk-buyers complain of low-quantity bulk-stock from smallholders. The inability of middlemen/agent-companies/wholesalers secure large quantity bulk-supply forces bulk-buyers to the more financially/logistically costly option of importation from large-farms abroad where large aggregation/preservation is possible due to good power supply.

LMD-Agro-Consultants has teamed up with YSDN among others to provide a holistic solution(SO-COOL) to this market-pull situation. SO-COOL involves three key integrated elements: Solar-Powered cooling-storage-facilities close to clustered-farms for aggregating perishable farm produce.

A clustered-blockchain-enabled-platform on which aggregated produce will be marketed and from which (bulk)buyers can make orders/reservations. It will use machine-learning to provide power-consumption forecast models and commodity guide prices.

LMD would facilitate aggregation of produce from small-holders-groups to appropriate/cooling infrastructure systems for (bulk) buyers' purchases.