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A New How-To Guide Chronicles Food and Water Innovators
It's challenging enough to start a business in mature markets, but just try running one in a rural community in a developing country with poor roads and customers who can't pay you. “Innovator Guidebook: Navigating Business Models for the Base of the Pyramid in Water and Energy for Food," highlights lessons from innovators funded by the five-year Securing Water for Food Grand Challenge. The online resource was unveiled today at SOCAP.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Energy, Entrepreneurship, Technology
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Flipkart to Foray Into Food Retail With New Entity
Newly registered Flipkart FarmerMart, with an authorised equity capital of Rs 1,845 crore, will sell items produced locally.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- e-commerce, emerging markets, farmers, food
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Designing for Social Good, Not ‘Feel Good’
Designing products for multinational corporations and their affluent target markets is very different from designing products for low-income, rural consumers. Jordan Westerberg, industrial designer with social venture development firm Factor[e], has worked in both of these worlds. He discusses a recent project that redesigned a solar conduction dryer for Indian farmers, and cautions against being drawn to simplistic, feel-good products when designing for social impact.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
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Why Sustainable Food is Key to Impact Investing in China
Tao Zhang founded one of China’s first impact investing vehicles for environmental SMEs, with a focus on the industrial sector. But he realized that there's a pressing environmental issue brewing at the consumer level – a demand for animal products increasing in tandem with rising incomes, bringing greater greenhouse gas emissions and health disparities. Zhang shares how his Dao Ventures consortium is making consumers part of the solution by partnering with other impact finance entities to boost the availability of – and appetite for – alternative protein sources.
- Categories
- Environment, Investing
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Affordable, Scalable, Overlooked: Evaporative Cooling Can Fight Food Loss – Why isn’t the Development Sector Embracing It?
Food loss due to lack of effective storage is a global problem: In sub-Saharan Africa alone, approximately 23 percent of available food is lost or wasted. There’s increasing interest in an innovative yet old-school solution to the problem: evaporative cooling. But though the technology can be adopted with minimal training, low up-front costs and no electricity, it is not widely used. MIT D-Lab research engineer Eric Verploegen explores five ways to increase the effective production, dissemination and usage of this technology.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Technology
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Low Tech, High Impact: An Affordable, Hand-Powered Innovation Aims to Boost Food Production in Africa
For many global development players, high-tech innovations are the go-to solution for challenges in emerging markets. But according to Taylor Quinn of JUST, Inc., low-tech approaches can be even smarter. He discusses the promising potential of locally made and hand-powered machines in emerging economy value chains, and explores how JUST is using one such device to improve food security, increase access to quality nutrition and promote entrepreneurship in Liberia.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Technology
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IBM’s Microfinance Blockchain in Kenya Tests the Viability of Hyperledger
IBM is back supporting a microfinance project using a Hyperledger blockchain to help administer small loans at low interest to food sellers in Kenya.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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After Years Of Violence, Chef Offers Colombian Farmers Pride And Profit
A Colombian chef turned social entrepreneur, Leonor Espinosa has made it her mission to revive traditional agriculture, ancestral foodways and culinary know-how among rural, mainly indigenous and Afro-Colombian people.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Entrepreneurship
- Region
- Latin America
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