How cold storage systems are helping farmers reduce post harvest losses
The platforms provide the ability for the users to search available cold chain services providers across the country.
Their cold rooms provide off-grid cold chain solutions to solve the problem of post-harvest losses in agriculture value chains. They offer three different solutions – MoFresh Hub: off-grid cold storage; MoFresh Box: a portable off-grid cold box, in other words, an insulated box with cooling materials, and the MoFresh App.
Theirs is an off-grid cold-store solution that helps farmers and retailers reduce waste as well as sell when prices are good. Usually, during times of harvest prices fall and recover later in the season. Cutting waste and getting better prices, therefore, leads to higher productivity and income.
A 2018 postharvest loss assessment on tomatoes, one of the most perishable produce, by the Horticulture Innovation Lab, indicated that farmers were losing – on average – 21 percent of their crop during harvest. At the collection point, it revealed, another 11.5 percent of tomatoes are lost. At the wholesale level, 10 percent of tomatoes are culled out and at the retail level, 13.6 percent of tomatoes are discarded.
This is why, in 2019, he set up a firm called ‘MoFresh’ after identifying the problem of postharvest losses. They are using an off-grid cold storage system to solve the problem of post-harvest loss from farmers to final consumers.
His inspiration came after being nominated for an incubation programme hosted by the UNOPS S3i Global Innovation Challenge which brings together entrepreneurs, corporations, academia, investors and other innovators to provide creative ideas and solutions. “The main area of activities was researching the effect of postharvest losses and looking at what solutions would fit the demand and the market,” Habiyambere said.
“Previously, I would incur some unnecessary losses due to my oranges getting bad before I could finish the stock,” she said.
According to Habiyambere, the concept of MoFresh was put together during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Before then, the entrepreneur was busy working on another startup that provided data science and artificial intelligence.