Solar-powered micro-warehouses for crop storage

Farmers can store as much or as little as they want using their crops as loan collateral

Spotted: Nigerian farmers lose up to 60 per cent of their harvested vegetable crops each year, leading to low earnings and massive wastage of resources, including water and fertilisers. Much of that waste occurs because of a lack of cold storage and temperature-controlled processing facilities, and the increasingly high temperatures resulting from climate change are hastening the rate at which products spoil.

Zebra CropBank is taking a hyperlocal approach to solving the problem. Focusing on last-mile infrastructure, the company builds warehouses known as Banks for farmers to use to store their produce. The solar-powered Banks are made from retrofitted cargo containers and can be built in around a week. They are located at the gate to a farm, and Zebra staff measure and grade each farmer’s input. The Banks store between 30 and 40 tonnes of produce, and farmers can deposit as much or as little as they like. Even a single bag of produce will be recorded and made available to the market.

Buyers tap into the digital marketplace to see what is available for each crop. Farmers choose when and how much to sell, and, by including their harvests regardless of size in larger sales, they can access better prices. Additionally, if a farmer needs credit, the crops in storage serve as collateral for electronic warehouse receipt-based loans.

CropBank is currently working across the Benue, Cross River, and Enugu states in Nigeria and has more than one million farmers’ organisation members using the banks. The company plans to expand across Nigeria and broaden its capability for storing additional crops. Early analysis of the company’s impact shows that more than 56 per cent of the farmers interviewed had income that ‘very much increased’ through their use of the Banks.

Solar-powered cold storage is making a difference around the world, with innovations in Springwise’s library including small-scale cool sheds and pay-as-you-go freezers for fishermen.

Written By: Keely Khoury