SokoFresh offers farm-level cold storage-as-a-service and a digital market linkage platform to seamlessly integrate small and medium-scale farmers into professional value chains; reducing food spoilage and increasing the farmers’ income by 30%.
Overview
The need: SokoFresh’s customers are mainly small-holder farmers who face challenges on all fronts when producing food for the country. Investing in innovative sustainable food loss prevention systems is vital in producing enough food while ensuring good quality, higher incomes for the smallholder farmer, and preserving the environment
The solution: Providing smallholder farmers with access to Mobile, Solar Powered, 5MT cold rooms and a market. To meet the farmers’ needs, Sokofresh delivers off-grid refrigerated cold rooms through Cooling as a Service for farmers to pay an affordable fee to access cold-storage rooms, in addition to receiving additional aggregation services, and market connection services.
Improved Livelihoods and Environmental Impact: Through Cooling as a Service, SokoFresh focuses on delivering climate-smart innovations to rural communities by making these accessible and affordable. Through SokoFresh’s services, farmers’ incomes have increased by up to 40% on average. This is the result of significant post-harvest loss reductions due to farm-level cold storage, but as well thanks to market linkage activities. Reducing post-harvest food loss also significantly impacts the amount of GHG released into the atmosphere, as well as ensuring that other valuable resources are not gone to waste.
At the grassroots level, SokoFresh already offered seasonal jobs to over 50 harvesters and 9 agents. Gender inclusion being a priority to SokoFresh, so far 300 women farmer leads/ agents have been benefitting from the service and 700 men.
Background
Cold storage has a very low adoption rate in Kenya, especially for a country so dependent on agriculture. Cold storage at the farm level is virtually non-existent in smallholder value chains. SokoFresh implemented CaaS to unlock cold storage at scale, while at the same time guaranteeing access to markets through a market linkage solution (a digital platform that facilitates direct trade between farmers and big buyers). SokoFresh approach ensures that smallholders have access to these innovations and are included in a more equitable way in the supply chain.
Project Information
CaaS and SokoFresh
SokoFresh is a Supporting Partner of the CaaS initiative of BASE. SokoFresh has been exploring the feasibility and implementation of the CaaS model together with BASE, helping to disseminate success stories and strengthen the CaaS network. SokoFresh and BASE have explored synergies for the implementation of the CaaS model, as SokoFresh is currently offering the CaaS model in Kenya.
In 2020, SokoFresh has been a finalist for the CaaS Prize.
Technology Partner
The key technology partner of SokoFresh is Ecozen Solutions. Their Ecofrost Solar Portable Cold Room uses thermal energy storage, avoiding costly and environmentally unfriendly chemical battery technologies. With the renewable Solar PV as the primary source of energy, it eliminates or curtails the dependency on fossil fuel based energy sources and increases the penetration of technology into off grid geographical regions to reduce the GHG emissions from food wastage. Ecozen units are immediately compatible with non-flammable R448A which has a GWP of 1273 as per 5th rev, IPCC. However, the company is looking to bring about low GWP refrigerant solutions as soon as possible.
Benefits
Today, SokoFresh has 9 cold storage units in operation. By 2023 (fifth year of operation), the team plans to have 190 units that are expected to offset 7.7 million kg CO2eq emissions annually (from both solar power offsetting diesel as well as post-harvest loss reductions).
