BioCul – Naturally Cool to Preserve.

We reduce post-harvest losses by providing nature-based storage facilities for fruits and vegetables, employing the principle of evaporative cooling and natural circulation, expanding their shelf life.

BioCul is helping reduce postharvest losses, specifically with fruits and vegetable production, and their negative impacts on climate change. Globally, one-third of food produced is lost during postharvest operations and the case in Ghana is no different. Smallholder farmers across the Offinso-North (a fruit and vegetable farming district) in the Ashanti Region of Ghana lose almost a third of their farm produce during every harvest, and at worst, all of their farms produce once an aggregator or a customer refuses to purchase on the arranged date. This has been a depressing factor because there is no storage facility to keep these farm produce once they are ripe for harvest, and without a ready market. Children are now forced to join their parents on the farm or hustle to make ends meet since the major source of income now more than ever is killing that hope to survive, keeping farmers in abject poverty.

We have integrated a century-old building technique into existing designs to produce a nature-based cold storage facility that works on the principle of evaporative cooling and natural circulation. We use local materials like clay bricks, sand and water, with a few advanced pieces of equipment like heat sensors, exhaust fans and water pumps. In operations, water is pumped beneath and around the building into a bilayer wall filled with sand for evaporative cooling and natural circulation to have its way. Once the heat sensors pick a temperature beyond a set range, all automation from the water pump and the exhaust fans begin, drawing out the lighter warm air in the chamber to produce a naturally cool environment for the storage, in other to reduce postharvest losses, expanding their shelf life for up to twenty days.

For fruits and vegetable farmers specifically living in Akomadan and Afrancho (as the first point communities), we have engaged to provide this facility to serve as a safe haven for their farm produce after every harvest, and also link them to ready markets across the country should there be the need. With farmers having a storage facility and an alternate market, the price fluctuations and low pricing of their farm produce can be solved, promising them higher returns on their tireless labour on the farm.

As a team of four, well diverse and uniquely positioned, we come with different skill set to compensate for each other. Below is a brief profile of all four of us;

Enoch Owusu Yeboah. Holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences, with 5 years of experience in the poultry farming industry, training in business modelling, entrepreneurship and leadership after having held some student organizations and portfolios during undergraduate study.

Akosah Kofi Gyimah. A 2nd-year Agricultural Biotechnology student at KNUST with research skills in development and innovation technology. Has experience in vegetable production and project innovation, as well as knowledge of environmental sustainability.

Yaa Dufie Yamoah. A 3rd-year student in KNUST reading BSc Human Settlement Planning.  Yaa Dufie worked as an intern at the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (Physical Planning Department) and has experience in sales and marketing after having worked with Madar Company and shell as an intern.

Agustine Somuah. A Biological Scientist from the University of Education Winneba. Having served as a teaching and research assistant at the Akenten Appiah-Menka University of Skills Training and Entrepreneurial Development, Ashanti Mampong. Has experience in research design, community outreach and cohort analysis.

In addition to our team are some fine lecturers and mentors from the Agricultural department of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, with specialties in soil science, postharvest technology and agribusiness. With this combination of people, we are well-positioned to better deliver on this all-important solution to well assist and help put smiles on the faces of these farmers, while contributing to the global agenda through SDGs 1, 2, 8, and 13.

Through some extension officers and farmer-based organizations, the entire team visited and interacted with these farmers both on their farms and at home to well understand these issues of post-harvest losses. From these engagements, we can now also confidently testify to the severity and intensity of the problem. With this glimmer of hope we still continue to be in touch with them as we encourage and assure them of the coming solution and so shouldn’t give up yet.

This method of keeping things cold has been a century old building technique but has forever been done on very small and private farms or homes just to accommodate a few stuffs. But with our integration into modern designs and upgrades like the sensors and pumps beneath and around the chamber, and heat insulation, our solution puts this technique on a commercial scale, well positioned to help very large farming communities and serve the greater good of many. With the full automation of the water pumps, exhaust fans and heat sensors, we need not do anything to balance the temperature in either cold or hot seasons just as was done in the past, where people manually poured water in-between walls to have that cooling effect. As long as resources are available, any size with any capacity can be constructed, fully automated and self-sustaining to help reduce post-harvest loses drastically.

The mission is to provide the best, most affordable and Eco-friendly vegetable storage with the advantage of high scalability well-tailored to our Ghanaian market, for smallholder farmers in fruits and vegetable production.

With this, we have the goal to serve our 20 subscribed farmers who collectively farm 105 acres of vegetables, by providing them with the storage services they need and sign not less than five partnership deals with tomato processors and off-takers. In doing so, we add value to their farm produce with our pre-cooling practices which translates into higher income once they get to the market. And with our current partners, we hope to raise more capital and secure more funds to accelerate and better deliver on the goals.

Biocul's cooling chamber employs a traditional principle and building technique, that is, evaporative cooling and natural circulation. But with us, the introduction of Arduino, heat sensors, water pumps, and heat insulators in roofing, we put these principles functioning at their best with little to no human monitoring or manual labour, to better deliver the desired results.

We currently have twenty farmers who collectively farm 105 acres of vegetables already subscribed to our services once completed and hope to double the number once we go fully operational for the next year. With the community having almost all of its indigenous people as farmers (over 20,000), we hope to expand the chamber to accommodate most if not all in the coming years.

We currently lack the capital to scale up and expand these chambers with a few legal issues in acquiring some lands for the project. Technically, as part of our roadmap, our further expansion would require that we look for an alternative to the sand we use as an absorber or moisture container in between the bi-layer brick walls in other to relieve the walls of any weight and avoid collapse. In view of that, research has to be done to better identify a substance that could better absorb water and not exert pressure on the walls of the chamber.

BioCul currently has three partners for mentoring, building design, construction, research and piloting:

• Kosmos Innovation Center for mentoring and some funds allocation right from the conception stage to the piloting phase.
• BEC, a construction company currently helping us with some resource persons concerning our building designs and technical advisory.
• KNUST - Department of Agribusiness and Extension, helping us with research and expert advice in post-harvest losses.

We store vegetables and fruits for a fee of 25 kilograms per twenty-four hours.With our operations manual and processes clearly stated, we first clean, sort and grade every farm product that comes in onto us before storing them in our chamber. Once this is done, these farm produce are now fit for any industrial or commercial market because of the treatment and maintenance. This adds value to the product and can be sold at an appropriate or even higher price, that is Value for Value. And once we link a farmer to a direct buyer or market, we take a commission on the sales made.

We make money through:

• Donations and grants
• Raising investment capital

And in the long term through:

• Market linkage
• Fee-for-service
• Employment
• Market intermediary.