BeeBank & Brokerage (BBB)

The pollination industry faces the challenge of disappearing bees due to anthropogenic environmental degradation, including climate change and pollution. Meanwhile, the agricultural industry increasingly relies on commercial beekeepers for pollination services and pollination brokers for contracting and logistics. Many beekeepers, however, don’t have access to the capital needed to keep their hives alive. BeeBank & Brokerage is a unique loan brokerage that offers instruments tailored to the unique needs of beekeepers and farmers in a market that has high variability and requires thorough, tailored credit assessment on the basis of future income potential. The income beekeepers receive from healthy, high-quality hives de-risks BBB’s lending, whilst benefiting crop yields. BBB initially targets the US, before scaling to other major economies with declining pollination. Sustainable pollination will lead to better yields and the efficient use of natural resources, which contributing to resilient ecosystems and addresses rising global rising food demand. 

Bees are dying and beekeepers do not have the capital needed to grow enough healthy hives. BeeBank & Brokerage aims to solve this gap by helping sideliner beekeepers scale their operations in order to meet farmer demand for higher and more resilient crop yields. 

Why is this important? 

• ⅓ of our global food supply is dependent on bees. Bees provide pollination for $16 billion worth of US food supply. However, beekeepers have experienced a 40% average hive loss in the past 30 years; 

• Beekeeping operations currently carry high financial risks, due to potential hive failure, and the need for expert knowledge and upfront capital; financial innovation presents an opportunity for investment into a niche market with high growth potential; 

• In the US, crop pollination accounts for 60 times the size of the market for honey production. There is an underestimation of bees’ importance in maintaining and growing food systems and, thus, a national and global financing gap; 

• Investing in nature is critical for post-COVID19 agricultural recovery, which has uncovered the fragility of global food systems and infrastructure. Currently, environmentally harmful subsidies outweigh finance mobilized to promote and preserve biodiversity and natural capital at least ten-fold. 

BBB is a simple innovation addressing the financing gap in the pollination space with a dual approach. We raise funds from investors to provide working capital loans to beekeepers. To de-risk these loans, we also broker pollination contracts between beekeepers and farmers.  

BBB’s model empowers mid-sized beekeepers with working capital loans enabling them to scale operations through the purchase of new hives, equipment, disease treatments, and other resources to keep hives healthy.  

Additionally, BBB uses in-house brokers to guarantee the provision of pollination contracts between farmers and beekeepers. The income beekeepers receive from their pollination services de-risks BBB’s lending, whilst improving crop yields by up to 200%. A centralised contract brokering entity, which does not currently exist in the ad-hoc pollination industry, would allow for standardised contracting and more equitable access to the market by beekeepers. 

BBB promotes sustainable agricultural practices that minimise harmful impact on biodiversity and ecosystems. Farmers are financially incentivized to use practices that do not harm the bees and other species.   

On top of benefits to farmers, beekeepers, and the environment, we have modelled in detail the financial aspects that makes this feasible.

As a uniquely specialized loan brokerage, we aim to target two main populations: sideliner beekeepers and farmers.  

Sideliner beekeepers, on the one hand, are currently underserved by lending institutions because lending to them is considered high-risk by traditional lenders. This is because bees have been dying at high rates, many beekeepers don’t usually have traditional securitization for agricultural lending such as land, and some may not have prior experience managing pollination services. Without additional capital opportunities, most sideliners, therefore, end up having smaller operations (about 500 hives) that do not have the ability to scale, or to take better care of their hives with resources necessary to prevent bee death, such as winter sheds and higher quality transportation systems. Furthermore, their operations remain volatile, as pollination contracts are negotiated via social media platforms (Facebook, predominantly) and such type of market place is not entirely efficient leading to many farmers’ needs being unmet and many beekeepers being unable to find sufficient contractual work to enable them to scale their operations. Members of our team have spoken and interacted with over 500 beekeepers in the US, and have developed and deployed primary surveys and conducted semi-structured interviews with beekeepers (and further surveys emergent from them) in order to better understand their needs on the ground. 

Similarly, we also conducted some primary conversations with farmers who use pollination services, on the other hand. They represent a segment that is likely to increase as the value of pollinators for higher crop yields becomes more widely recognised and necessary for farming. Farmers are prepared to pay (and is already the industry standard) for higher quality bees and at times do not find enough supply for their pollination needs. 

Based on these needs of our target populations, our solution has decided to contribute to resilient ecosystem development using innovative financial levers – via an integrated solution of lending and brokering addressing our target populations’ needs, specifically. This would address both of the populations’ needs of the informal brokering market by professionalizing the industry, hence leading to its higher efficiency as supply and demand needs are centrally aggregated. Our lending would be securitised with the beekeepers’ inventory, not land traditionally used in agricultural lending, which would lower the barrier to entry for sideliner beekeepers for loans. With those loans and borrower undertaking commitments, they will be able to take better care of their hives, leading to higher bee survival rates. This would further de-risk BeeBank & Brokerage’s lending, while providing higher quality bees, leading to higher and better-quality yields, to farmers. In this way, we would provide the first solution to the financing gap that prevents natural pollination from scaling to meet the food and ecological demands of the future.

Humanity relies on the ecosystem service of pollination for 1/3 of all food production but bees are dying, primarily due to climate change. Ironically, agriculture itself is currently responsible for 20% of global GHG emissions. More unsustainable agricultural practices, means less bees, less biodiversity, and less resilient ecosystems. We can financially incentivize farmers to use more environmentally-friendly practices, such as cover cropping, or using better pesticides, to help keep the bees healthy. Healthy bees can increase crop yields but up to 200% without the excessive use of fertilizers. Scaling up healthy bees, not only benefits farmers, but also surrounding ecosystems. 

BeeBank & Brokerage is currently at the concept-level stage, though it has been validated as needed, addressing a real gap and interest in the market, as well as financially feasible and scalable, as it won the Kellogg-Morgan Stanley global Sustainable Investing Challenge in 2021 (1st/123 graduate teams) and was the runner-up in the global Climate Investing Challenge (2nd/126 graduate teams), organized by Imperial College and Standard Chartered. Since these successes, we have been validating the model by reaching out to target populations and refining our operational model, while receiving deep professional guidance on the structure of our lending operations – together making a joint solution of lending and brokering a feasible one. We are aiming to secure some initial funding in order to validate our model further via a pilot before starting scaling. 

We are providing financial innovation at four different points in the industry. By integrating working capital loans with in-house pollination contract brokering, BBB provides: 

1. Beekeepers with competitive pollination contracts, logistical assistance, and best practices which leads to more guaranteed income from healthier hives, and de-risks BBB’s lending;  

1. Farmers with a guaranteed supply of pollination in a vast but underserved and decentralised market; 

1. Investors with a fixed and steady rate of return tied directly to pollination contracts by managing the value chain; 

1. A centralised contract brokering entity, which does not currently exist in the ad-hoc pollination industry, and would allow for standardised contracting and more equitable access to the market by new (and sideliner) beekeepers. 

We do expect BBB to change the market, because we are services three key stakeholders: beekeepers, farmers, and investors alike. On top of this we aim to collect data on beekeepers and farming practices, that previously unattainable in an unofficial market.  

Our solution is currently not yet in action. It would aim to lend to 400 sideliner beekeepers in its first year, doubling that number by year 2. Each of them will be able to work with multiple farmers, so within the first year only, we would expect about a 1000 farmers to be impacted directly as well. We further expect lots of indirect impacts as better health bees will increase quality and quantity of yields thus increasing the wellbeing of the farmers and beekeepers, local communities and markets.

BBB’s KPIs for quantifying impact will be demonstrated by measuring:  

• The number of beekeepers and farmers that BBB provides services to;

• The number of healthy hives vs hives lost;

• The end of year crop yields, which is tied to effective pollination relative to other inputs such as fertilizers;

• The change in beekeepers' income through pollination contracts over time;

• The number of beekeepers fulfilling their contracts through the use of healthy hives;

• The reduction in fertilizer use as associated GHG emissions. 

Going beyond beekeepers and farmers, we will be contributing to the following UN SDGs, measured with these indicators accordingly.

SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) through the promotion of resilient agricultural practices and increasing access to capital and markets for agriculture (indicators* 2.3.1, 2.3.2, 2.a.2; 2.5.1).  

SDG 15 (Life on Land) through the sustainable use and promotion of biodiversity and ecosystem services, reducing degradation of natural habitats (indicators 15.a.1). 

SDG 12 (Responsible consumption and production) through the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources (indicators 12.3.1). 

Two people would move into full-time roles and two people would move into part-time roles upon receipt of initial funding.

Our tailored financial solution is made possible by our unique team, created solely for the purpose of bringing BeeBank & Brokerage to life. Our team is made up of two University of Oxford MBAs and two PhDs.  

Dawn Musil (MBA) is our technical expert. She is a seasoned beebroker and entrepreneur, with over a decade of experience in the pollination space. She has spoken to hundreds of beekeepers and farmers.  

Noah Law (MBA) is in charge of the finances. He is an investment banker and development financier. He has worked at Deutsche Bank, Ernst & Young, and Finnfund.  

Annabella Wainer (PhD) is our resident scientist and sustainabilty specialist. She brings ESG, biodiversity, and nature expertise, as PhD student in climate and conservation finance. She holds a BSc in Biology and an MPhil in Environmental Policy. Annabella formerly worked at PwC as a sustainability and climate change consultant. 

Emile Radyte (PhD) provides critical public health, policy and nutrition expertise. Emile is in charge of scaling our operations. She also leads on outreach and engagement, with a focus on our contributions to Sustainable Development Goal 2, zero hunger. She is a Harvard graduate and has worked for Public Health England. 

Our team has experience in over 30 countries.  

Diversity and inclusion are critical to our team. We all come from a diverse background in terms of ethnicity, nationalities, but also socio-economic status. BeeBank & Brokerage’s leadership team is made of women, and half of the team come from mixed-ethnic minority families (Black and Asian). We have 4 different nationalities: British, American, Lithuanian, and Luxembourgish. Half of the team are also first-generation graduate students. All but one of our team members are on full-ride scholarships, enabling us to take advanced degrees that we wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise.  

Being part of this programme will enable us to overcome the largest barriers that we are currently facing with bringing BeeBank & Brokerage to life. The largest barriers mentioned before are in regard to the lack of understanding and data around the pollination market and commercial beekeeping, as well as informal format of the market. Becoming a part of this community will first and foremost give us a community of peers who are facing similar challenges to our own: resolving challenges in the informal and underdeveloped markets that most need innovation and technology. This community of peers is foundational to our ability to spark change, as the entrepreneurial path can provide many challenges and frustrations, but having the camaraderie of peers who are facing similar challenges will enable our team to persevere despite the inevitable roadblocks.  

Access to capital through this programme would help us overcome the critical barriers of lack of understand of the value of the pollination market and misunderstanding of the growing segment of sideliner beekeepers. Raising capital for a space that is niche and has a demonstrated financing gap but is so informal has proven to be a challenge, but the resources that Resolve offers will enable us to overcome this aspect.  

The powerful network of impact-minded leaders across industry will be critical alongside evaluation support, and strategic advice will enable us to overcome the challenges that we have seen as we move closer to implementation of our pilot program.

We would primarily need support in the technology space. It would be great to have someone support us building a website, and helping us set up online systems for data collection and processing.  

We also need help pitching to investors, as pollination is a novel space and unfamiliar to most people.  

It would be great to work with the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative to advise us on how to best collect and process data (financial and environmental) that investors would be interested in. Our solutions spans many disciplines, from agribusiness, to investments, to biodiversity conservation and ecosystem functioning. Therefore, we would appreciate getting help from academics and practioners interested in the intersection of business and sustainability. Our project pilot will also be in the United States, and it would greatly help up to be connected to the US market through MIT’s network.  

Healthy beehive maintenance principles highly overlap with those of decarbonization, as we are uniquely poised to focus on both climate change mitigation and adaptation and see the impact for both of these aspects listed below: 

• Mitigation:  

  • Increasing crop yield by up to 200%, reduction in pesticide and fertilizer use, and reduced tillage would lead to up to 1% reduction in total US GHG emissions (the US being our initial target market), or >10% reduction of total US agricultural GHG emissions.  

• Adaptation:  

  • increasing agricultural resilience by reducing bee death from 40% to 20% through the provision of capital needed to keep hives healthyaffecting 1/3rd of the global food supply currently pollinated by bees.  

  • negating the effects of 2% annual insect decline, caused by climate change and habitat loss, by keeping pollinators alive 

  • helping biodiversity through sustainable agricultural practices such as less pesticide use (studies estimated 8 birds/hectare die from pesticide use).