Often, when considering how the world can feed the nine to ten billion people we expect to be here in 2050, we hear that we will need to increase our global food production by 50%. This statistic is repeated regularly by big agro-businesses, as they seek to justify an ever expanding growth and production. While the challenge is clear, the narrative that 'we must feed the world', wrongly legitimizes current production practices. The narrative fails to address the fact, that feeding a world population of nine to ten billion, is also a question of the distribution of production and consumption - a matter of ensuring access of nutritional foods to all. Today, half of the commercial seed market is controlled by three companies. Four firms control up to 90% of the global grain trade. And seven companies control 100% of fertilizer sales. Big scale advantages are arguably good for increasing production, but they can also be problematic with respect to the challenge of ensuring access to nutritional foods for all. Food production today is already high, but one-third of all food produced is either lost or wasted. To put this in economic terms, food loss and waste causes as much as 940 billion dollars of economic losses every year. Losing less is key to meeting the demands of a growing population, while turning our production in a more sustainable direction. Food loss and waste is a global issue, but while it is present in all parts of the world, the concrete challenges are regionally specific. In Nigeria, Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu describes how better transportation and storage is vital: The food supply system in Nigeria is completely broken, and it's completely inefficient, for instance you have food harvested in farms - it takes quite a while, before the trucks come in to pick it up. That can stretch from two to three days, before the trucks comes to pick it up. Then, this is normally non-refrigerated trucks that come to pick it up, and it takes a long trip sometimes four hours, five hours, seven hours - it can stretch to 24 hours, for the trucks to move the food out from the farms, bringing it to markets where they are eventually sold. At every point in the value chain there is spoilage. The spoilage starts when the fruit is harvested, all the vegetables are harvested - and that time frame it takes, before the truck comes in to pick up the food - spoilage sets in. Now these trucks are traveling on the most difficult routes, getting to the local market and at these roads, these fruits and vegetables are squished, they experience a lot of spoilage too - and that track then continues till it gets to markets like this. In markets like this, what the farmers and retailers are actually doing - or wholesalers rather - is to sell as quickly as possible. They are selling food as quickly as possible to recoup, before it eventually spoils. What we are trying to do with them with ColdHubs is to build these solar- powered working cold rooms, very close to them, so they can actually have an opportunity to store food and sell when they want to sell. They sell, when the prices are confident for them or whenever they want to sell. So, that is actually what we are doing with ColdHubs. ColdHubs is one of Nnaemekas companies, and they are working in a simple, but effective way to limit food loss: So what we are doing is building up these 100% solar-powered working cold rooms and they are situated in farms and market places. The goal is to use them to store food for as much as 21 days - as much as possible. So actually how the technology works is we have a 5500 watts power generation capacity which is in solar panels formats, and these solar panels actually charges the monoblock refrigeration system and the monoblock refrigeration system cools the food - but in the daytime we are cooling food off the solar panels, but at the same time storing energy in high-capacity batteries and these batteries is for night cooling, days of cloudy weather and days of rain, when there is no optimal sunshine. Excess power from the ColdHubs are also used to wire and to power Internet hotspots. There's an upcoming relationship we have with Microsoft, where we use the excess power. From this 5500W capacity energy, we're only using about 580 watts, and that leftover power is used to power Internet kiosks and Wi-Fi hotspots. The amount of food lost each year due to postharvest loss is enough to feed the total number of undernourished people globally. Moreover, the biggest loss rates are in precisely the regions, where food is needed the most. Across sub-saharan Africa between 30% and 50% of production is lost along the value chain. This creates a massive potential for local solutions like ColdHubs: Nigeria is losing more than 50% of its animal, fruit and vegetable harvest. The work we are doing is to cut it down by preserving food and storing food from the moment it is harvested to the transportation and also in the market untill retailers and wholesalers are able to sell their commodities. The potential for ColdHubs is massive in this country, at every street corner, there is a fruit and vegetables market. There is perishable food being sold somewhere, so actually the Nigerian market can take close to a 100 thousand ColdHubs of different sizes and dimensions. There are bigger markets where you need big ColdHubs, and there are smaller markets where you need smaller ColdHubs. So, the Nigerian market is huge, it is 200 million people, 200 million mouths to feed every day, so you can imagine the amount of food that is produced in Nigeria and the amount that goes to waste due to lack of cold storage. Although ColdHubs has been developed to fight food loss, its transformational value is in the broad range of societal goals it contributes to. I think ColdHubs is an incredible solution. ColdHubs meets different needs, it has incredible social impact, it enables farmers, retailers and wholesalers and all the food supply chain actors actually, to extend the shelf life of food, from two days to at least 21 days or whenever they want to sell. ColdHubs increases the income of these farmers, retailers and wholesalers because typical food that is wasted can now be stored and sold at another time. And we are pioneering a system where these ColdHubs are being used to create employment for women, with massive unemployment all across Nigeria. So we are using hubs to create employment by recruiting and training ladies, who run our hubs in farms and in marketplaces. So you see that aside, a little bit of the business side of it, it has an immense social impact. So ColdHubs brings everything together, it brings social impact, on renewable energy, on food security, on nutrition, having nutritious food available, storing food in a safe and hygiene manner. ColdHubs brings all these things together and including gender perspective of creating employment for women.
