FAO, SEED launch program for agrifood system startups

THE Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the SEED partnership recently launched the SDG Agrifood Accelerator Programme, an instrument designed to help agrifood system start-ups develop their businesses while contributing to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

FAO noted that alternative approaches and innovative solutions are needed to transform global agrifood systems in the face of challenges, such as rapid population growth, economic downturns, extreme climates and changing consumption patterns.

During a virtual event held at FAO’s headquarters in Rome last February 16, 12 innovators from around the world used a workshop to showcase how they are contributing to the SDGs while supporting such a transformation in their local context.

T he small- and medium-sized

INSIDE a 4,000-square-foot laboratory at the heart of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a group of scientists are demonstrating how to make wearable shrimp shells.

It all starts with mixing chitosan—a white-powder biochemical component extracted from the shells—with water and organic acid. As the chitosan is dissolving, the scientists add in what they call the “secret sauce,” a combination of biomaterials and pigments that varies depending on the texture and color being targeted. The liquid is then poured into a mold and placed in a heater to evaporate excess water, not unlike bak- enterprises were selected among the hundreds that comprise the portfolio of the adelphi-hosted SEED partnership. They are to be supported by the program in three areas: financial readiness, innovation potential, and market reach. The kind of help they will receive includes assistance in the development of business, marketing or investment plans, as well as advice on how to approach potential financiers or on how to go digital.

“ Together with SEED we want to explore how the innovators involved can make a difference in the transformation of agrifood systems locally as we work towards achieving the SDGs globally,” said Stefanos Fotiou, Director of FAO’s Office of Sustainable Development Goals.

Leveraging the network of innovators from SEED and nurturing local agrifood solutions through a tailored innovation support package opens new ways for FAO to have an ing a cake in an oven. Several hours later, all that remains is the final product: a laptop-sized piece of leather-like fabric.

“It’s amazing to see how the material picks up all the details,” says Uyen Tran, pointing at a silver piece of material, this one covered in a snakeskin pattern. At a glance, the shrimp leather doesn’t look much different than its traditional cousins made from animal hide; it feels fairly authentic, too. And while the fabric doesn’t have any of the rich smell of cow leather, neither does it smell anything like seafood. Tran, 30, is co-founder of TômTex, a two-year-old startup that makes tex- on-the-ground impact.”

SEED Executive Director Arab Hoballah said: “The caliber of the 12 selected SDG Agrifood Innovators is inspiring, leading by example for replication and acceleration of change. We are excited to further their SDG contributions with FAO through our joint Programme. We strongly encourage policymakers and financers to take a closer look at these innovative SMEs as they have the potential to become key partners in transforming global food systems in the transition to circularity and sustainability.”

‘Creative solutions’

THE SDG Agrifood Accelerator Programme acknowledges that all 17 SDGs are interconnected and addresses challenges across a broad range of goals, from no poverty and zero hunger to good health, gender equality and climate action.

Operating across eight countries in Africa and Asia, the 12 SMEs who joined the Programme have been pioneering solutions designed to transform agrifood systems while improving the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in their communities.

One example is the Amaati Group, which empowers rural Ghanaian women by farming indigenous Fonio grains. Fonio has low water requirements and can withstand adverse weather conditions. This social enterprise works with over 2,000 farmers and dries, de-husks, packages, stores, and markets Fonio cereal products for household consumption.

A nother can be found in Botswana, where Kalahari Honey trains and supplies farmers with beehives that act as ‘active’ fences to prevent elephants from destroying their farms. The farmers sell the bee products back to Kalahari, which then markets them globally.

to oil millers for the production of coconut oil,” PhilMech said.

A lvindia said the SPF program will enable coconut farmers’ cooperatives to produce coconut oil while sourc- ing their raw materials from smaller farmer cooperatives.

A lso, he said the smaller coconut cooperatives that will have SPFs to efficiently produce more copra can directly supply to existing large coconut oil mills.

The SPFs will also allow coconut farmer cooperatives to produce various products from coco coir from discarded husks. These include geotextiles, mats, ropes, planting medium, among others,” he said.

C iting data from the United States Department of Agriculture, PhilMech said the Philippines is still the world’s top coconut oil producer with an estimated output of 1.668 million metric tons (MMT) followed by Indonesia with 1.025 MMT T he country is also the leading exporter of dessicated coconut but it lags behind in terms of coco coir production and exports, according to the attached agency of the Department of Agriculture.

A lvindia said PhilMech “will also provide training for the farmer’s coconut cooperatives, and will coach and monitor their progress.”

The objective is for the cooperatives to become viable business enterprises. We will provide three years of coaching and mentoring. We want these cooperatives to be successful.”

THE Marcos Jr. administration should allow the state to import rice through government-to-government (G2G) deals to be able to achieve its promise of cutting the price of the staple to P20 per kilogram.

Lawyer Lorenzo Gadon also said only the government should import rice as this would make the staple cheaper. He made the pitch in a speech at the BBM National Leader’s Convention in Pampanga on Saturday.

Gadon, an ally of the current administration, said this is one of the things he learned during his recent trip to Cambodia, which he said serves as a paddy production area for Vietnamese rice farms.

Bringing down the price of rice in the Philippines to P20 per kg is one of the campaign promises made by President Marcos Jr., who is concurrently sitting as the country’s agriculture chief.

Gadon said a business group went to Cambodia two weeks ago with the plan of striking a deal on bringing in rice from Cambodia to the Philippines.

Thought that we will be able to achieve the promise of BBM that as much as possible the price of rice is P20 per kg. We computed it and it is achievable but at the start we really have to import rice,” Gadon, who failed to secure a Senatorial seat in the past three national elections, said during the gathering of Marcos Jr. supporters.

Before I was against importation but this time I saw the wisdom [of it]. The government can save a lot through importation. The government, not the private traders, should import and sell rice.”

Gadon claimed that any savings that the government will enjoy from directly importing and selling rice in the domestic market should be used in modernizing the country’s rice farming methods, which he said remains “jurassic” to this day.

In five years, based on our computation, the government-to-government importation of rice will put up a good post harvest system in the Philippines. During that five years, we will be able to provide intensive assistance to the farmers.”

Today, only the Philippine International Trading Corp. can import rice on behalf of the national government after the rice trade liberalization law deregulated the rice industry, and removed the authority of the National Food Authority to purchase the staple from abroad.

“Our rice farming method is still very jurassic. The farmers will harvest palay and dry them under the sun in the roadsides. That is too slow. The milling facilities of our rice millers are 30 years or 40 years old resulting in very limited milling capacity,” Gadon said.

Gadon noted that this was in stark contrast to the rice farming value chain in Cambodia, which he visited recently and where he saw firsthand the rice industry of the Philippines’s Southeast Asian neighbor.

“

The rice that we are importing from Vietnam is coming from Cambodia. They pass through Vietnam because Vietnam’s port has a shorter distance to the Philippines,” he said.

“In Cambodia, I saw the rice mills are very modern and the process is very fast. Once the palay finishes drying it is sent straight to milling. Everything is automated, even the packing of rice.” Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas tiles out of shrimp shells, mushroom waste and other biomaterials. TômTex, which means “shrimp textile” in Vietnamese, plans to increase its production capacity of biodegradable leather to 100,000 square feet this year. On its own, that’d be enough to make roughly 2,000 leather jackets, but for now TômTex is mostly producing fabric samples and working on custom designs for fashion clients. When British womenswear brand Di Petsa showed at London Fashion Week in February, TômTex’s shrimp-shell biomaterial was featured in a long dress that mimicked both traditional leather and fish scales.

Modern clothing has a significant environmental footprint: Polyester and nylon, two ubiquitous forms of plastic derived from oil, are the backbone of today’s textiles; they’re also prime sources of microplastic pollution. Globally, apparel makers emit more greenhouse gases than aviation and shipping combined, and the United Nations Environment Programme estimates that by 2050, the fashion industry could use up a quarter of the world’s carbon budget.

I n response to criticism from consumers and policymakers, a growing number of startups are de - veloping materials that mimic the look, feel and durability of traditional textiles, without the negative impact of synthetics. MycoWorks and Bolt Threads, two startups based in Emeryville, California, are making leather-like fabric with mushroom roots. Los Angelesbased Mi Terro turns spoiled milk into t-shirts, while London-based Vollebak sells t-shirts woven from hemp and colored with algae. Even big retailers are interested: Swedish apparel maker H&M Group is bankrolling startups that develop textiles made from unconventional sources such as wood residue. TômTex’s model aims to tackle two problems at once: finding biodegradable materials for garment manufacturers and upcycling mountains of marine waste. In 2021, global shrimp production surpassed 4.5 million tons, up about 50 percent from 2015. For any given catch, roughly half of the volume consists of shrimp shells, which are discarded as processing byproducts. While chitosan derived from discarded shrimp shells has long been deployed in wastewater treatment and food supplements, its use in textile production has been virtually nonexistent. Bloomberg News