Project
A better grain value chain for Africa
Our work in Ghana
We started in Ghana in late 2020. With only 6 customers we went through a first season and are really grateful to our first adaptors! They worked with us, advised and created with us!
By now, we introduced our service to all agricultural areas in Ghana and started in Kenya. We are really encouraged by the enthusiasm and the demand that we receive. And we are humbled by the pride of our aggregators to support smallholder farmers.
Our solution
Smallholders
Smallholders sell during the harvest season because they need money to repay agricultural and personal loans and cover expenses. This leads to an oversupply and prices close to the production price. They also can’t store without losing a quarter of their grain to insects…
Wih us, farmers participate on the future price of grain! In an average year smallholders increase their profits by appr. 50%. And the money comes when they need it most – in the lean season when money is needed for cultivation and you start skipping meals…
Aggregators
Aggregators normally live in the same community with smallholders and buy grain from them. Normally they work on behalf of outside grain traders and only receive a small fee for their service. Some of them also use their own capital to buy but usually sell quickly afterwards at a small profit (day trading).
We provide safe hermetic storage, credit, training and an off-take channel – this allows aggregators to tap into the big price increases after the harvest. With us, aggregators make 120% profits in an average season.
Industry
The food industry buys via a network of agents with little transparency. Additional uncertainty comes from low quality grain contaminated with aflatoxin. Traceability would help the quality management and is increasingly demanded by stakeholders looking for smallholder-friendly procuement and social sustainability in the supply chain.
Saving Grains can deliver the complete package: High quality hermatically stored grain that is traceable back to the smallholder!
Our vision
Fully hermetic value chain
While we can supply traceable, quality grainwe understand that we need a technological solution for industrial supply chains. We develop a fully hermetic supply chain solution for industrial off-takers:
Smallholders receive training from Saving Grains in the use of hermetic storage. They can store a part of their harvest wihout losses or compromising the grain quality. Our technology allows smallholders, aggregators and traders to sell sealed hermetic bags. For the first time these bags can move through the value chain because the grain quality can be read out through an Android App. Opening or piercing bags for quality control is not necessary anymore. Each transaction is recorded in our cloud data base that gives complete traceability and a full chain of custody to off-takers.
Why? No post-harvest losses. Full traceability. Better quality. Transparency on grain stocks in the upstream value chain.
Aflatoxin prediction
Traceability and machine learning allows us for the first time to predict the occurrence of aflatoxin. This not only allows us to make industrial supply chains safer. It also allows us to provide crucial public health information. A spatio-temporal aflatoxin warning system can help the food industry and public health system. It also allows to target alfatoxin reduction technologies such as aflasafe and aflatoxin removal to where they are needed the most.
