Tag: poverty

Ending World Hunger: Insect-Based “Power Flour”

insect_flourIt has long been understood that if we, as a species, are going to deal with overpopulation and hunger, we need take a serious look at our current methods of food production. Not only are a good many of our practices unsustainable – monoculture, ranching, and overuse of chemical fertilizers being foremost amongst them – it is fast becoming clear that alternatives exist that are more environmentally friendly and more nutritious.

However, embracing a lot of these alternatives means rethinking our attitudes to what constitutes food. All told, there are millions of available sources of protein and carbohydrates that aren’t being considered simply because they seem unappetizing or unconventional. Luckily, researchers are working hard to find ways to tackle this problem and utilize these new sources of nutrition.

HULT-PRIZE-large570One such group is a team of McGill University MBA students who started the Aspire Food Group, an organization that will produce nutritious insect-based food products that will be accessible year-round to some of the world’s poorest city dwellers. Recently, this group won the $1 million Hult Prize for the development of an insect-infused flour that offers all the benefits of red meat – high protein and iron – but at a fraction of the cost.

The team – which consists of Mohammed Ashour, Shobhita Soor, Jesse Pearlstein, Zev Thompson and Gabe Mott – were presented with the social entrepreneurship award and $1 million in seed capital back in late September. The presentation was made by former U.S. president Bill Clinton in New York City at the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting.

world_hungerThe Hult Prize Foundation runs an annual contest open to teams of four or five students from colleges and universities from around the world. Their task is to develop ideas for social enterprises – organizations that use market-based strategies to tackle social or environmental problems. This year’s challenge, selected by Clinton, was to tackle world hunger.

Over 10,000 students entered, and the McGill team was one of six which reached the final stage, where they pitched their idea Monday to judges that included Clinton, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus and Erathrin Cousin, CEO of the World Food Program. The $1 million was provided by the family of the Swedish billionaire Bertil Hult, who made his fortune with the venerable EF Education First company.

insect_flour1Mohammed Ashour explained the process behind the insect flour in an interview to CBC News:

We are farming insects and we’re grinding them into a fine powder and then we’re mixing it with locally appropriate flour to create what we call power flour. It is essentially flour that is fortified with protein and iron obtained from locally appropriate insects.

What is especially noteworthy about the product, aside from its sustainability, is the fact that it delivers plenty of protein and iron in an inexpensive package. These nutrients, the team noted, are in short supply in the diets of many people in developing nations, but can be found in high amounts in insects. For example, they note, crickets have a higher protein content per weight than beef.

???????????????????????????????And while the idea of eating insects might seem unappealing to many people living in the developed world, Soor pointed out that people in many of the countries they are targeting already eat insects. In addition, the type of insect used to produce the flour for a local market would be chosen based on local culinary preferences. As she put it:

There really isn’t a ‘yuck’ factor. For example, in Mexico, we’d go with the grasshopper. In Ghana, we’d go with the palm weevil.

The insects would also be mixed with the most common type of local flour, whether it be made from corn, cassava, wheat or something else. Thus, the product would not only provide nutrition, but would be locally sourced to ensure that it is accessible and beneficial to the local market.

Developed-and-developing-countriesIn addition, the team has already held taste tests in some markets. In one test, they offered people tortillas made from regular corn flour, corn flour containing 10 per cent cricket flour and corn flour containing 30 per cent cricket flour. As Ashour indicated, the reviews were met with approval:

Amazingly enough, we got raving reviews for the latter two… so it turns out that people either find it to be tasting neutral or even better than products that are made with traditional corn flour.

The team hopes to use the prize money to help them expand the reach of their organization to the over 20 million people living in urban slums around the world by 2018. And I can easily foresee how flours like this one could become a viable item when teamed up with 3D food printers, tailoring edible products that meet our nutritional needs without putting undue strain on the local environment.

And be sure to enjoy this video of the McGill students and their prize-winning flour, courtesy of CBC news:


Source: cbc.ca

Powered by the Sun: Bringing Solar to the Developing World

Magnificent CME Erupts on the Sun - August 31All over the world, the goal of bringing development to impoverished communities and nations – but in ways that won’t cause additional harm to the natural environment – remains problematic. As the cases of China and India demonstrate, the world’s fastest growing economies in the 21st century, rapid industrialization may bring economic development, but it comes with a slew of consequences.

These include urban sprawl, more emissions from cars and public transit, and the poisoning of waterways through toxic runoff, chemicals and fertilizers. With seven billion people living in the world today, the majority of which live in major cities and are dependent on fossil fuels, it is important to find ways to encourage growth that won’t make a bad situation worse.

solar_quetsolBut to paraphrase an old saying, crisis is the mother of creative solutions. And amongst forward-looking economist and developers, a possible solution is take the latest advancements in solar, wind, tidal power and biofuels, and tailor them to meet the needs of local communities. In so doing, it is hoped that the developing world could skip over the industrial phase, reaping the benefits of modernization without all the dirty, unhealthy consequences.

Two such men are Juan Rodriguez – a young man who was studying for his business administration at the Universidad Francisco Marroquin in and cut his teeth working for major multinationals like Pampers, Pepto Bismol and Pantene – and his childhood friend Manuel Aguilar, a Harvard graduate with a degree in astrophysics who had gone on to manage a global hedge fund.

solar_quetsol1Three years ago, the two agreed that they were looking for something else and began investigating renewable energy. The result was Quetsol, a company that uses solar energy to improve the quality of life of poor communities living off the electrical grid. In Rodriguez’s and Aguilar’s native Guatemala, such poverty is widespread, with close to 20% of the population living without electricity and relying primarily on candles for light.

This picture of poverty is not exactly news. But after spending a year visiting close to 100 such communities, Rodriguez and Aguilar began to get a clear picture of why solar hadn’t yet succeeded. As Rodriguez put it:

Going to a community and talking about solar power isn’t like going into a community and talking about space travel. It is something that people have already seen, because NGOs have donated solar systems to these communities for decades. In many cases, the systems worked perfectly, but eventually the batteries died, and nobody was there to service them.

solar_quetsol2There solution was to start from the bottom up, using the free-market principle of adapting their approach to meet local needs. This would involve identifying communities before visiting them, taking into account how many people were living without electricity, and what the housing situation was like. When they then visited these communities, they sought out community leaders and held public meetings to learn about them and present their ideas.

Buildings relationships with local communities was a challenge, but so was creating a product for a market whose needs ranged from basic lighting and cell phone charging to powering a refrigerator all day. What they found was that unelectrified communities were relying on terribly inefficient means, ranging from diesel generators to walking to the nearest electrified community to plug in a phone.

solar_quetsol3What was resulted was a Solar Kit, consisting of a 10W Solar Panel, a control box with 7 Amp Battery, 2  LED Bulbs  (and a third optional bulb), and a universal cell phone charger. This kit has the ability to provide five hours of electricity to a house made up of two rooms that measure roughly 25 square meters (225 square feet) each. This is the typical design of homes in rural Guatemala, with one room serving as the bedroom and the other as the kitchen.

With that done, they began working on their sales strategy. Initially, this consisted of working with microfinance credit institutions to help families and communities purchase their solar kits. But after watching too many credit applications get rejected, they took a page from the telecom companies that have made cell phones ubiquitous in Guatemala, Basically, they switched to a pay-as-you-go plan.

solar_quetsol4Today, Quetsol employs a staff of 20 people and boasts board members like Google’s Tom Chi. There product line has also expanded, with the Q1 Solar Kit being supplemented by the Q3, a heavier model that boasts a 75W solar panel, an 85 Amp Battery, and five LED bulbs. The Q2 Kit – a middle of the road model with a 30W panel, 34 amp battery and 3 bulbs – is soon to be released.

But most importantly of all, they have electrified more than 3,500 homes in Guatemala thus far. But that is just a drop in the bucket compared to their long-term goal. Basically, the organization is viewing Guatemala as a stepping stone to all of Latin America as well as Africa by 2015. By 2016, they’d like to tackle the nearly 700 million off-the-grid homes in Asia.

Might sound ambitious, but Rodriguez and Marroquin feel they have the business acumen and social entrepreneurial savvy to pull it off. And given their background and business model, I’d say they are about right. Combined with other technologies that merge local needs with clean, efficient, and renewable means, development in the developing world might actually be an eco-friendly possibility.

Sources: fastcoexist.com, quetsol.com

 

Five Technologies for the Developing World

Developed-and-developing-countriesWhen it comes to providing energy in the “developed world”, the challenge is in finding ways to generate electricity, heat, and cooling in a way that will not burden our environment. Whereas providing these things in the past has never been much of a challenge, finding ways to meet future demand in a way that is sustainable and renewable often is. Lucky for us, we have the means to meet this challenge head on.

But in the “developing world”, where the infrastructure does not readily exist, populations continue to grow exponentially, and the concerns about the natural environment are quite grave already, the challenge of providing for people’s basic needs presents a significant challenge. At the same time however, it presents an opportunity for creative solutions.

What follows is just a few examples of what engineers and designers have come up with in recent years. These devices are especially innovative because they are capable of increasing the supply of safe, cheap energy on a user-by-user basis, bypassing the years it takes to extend a power grid to remote places, the resources needed to increase a country’s energy production capacity, or the environmental damage involved.

Voto-Stove1. The Voto: Millions of people around the world use coal or wood-fired stoves to provide for their cooking and heating needs. Developed by the company Point Source Power, the VOTO converts the energy these fires release as heat into electricity, which can power a handheld light, charge a phone or even charge a spare battery. Initially designed for backpackers and campers, the company is also trying to find a way to make it accessible to residents of the developing world, where it will be much more useful.

2. Window Socket: Here we have what is perhaps the simplest solar charger in existence. Simply attach the suction cup to a window or any sun-exposed surface, let sit for 5 to 8 hours, and the solar panels will store enough electricity to power a device for up to ten hours. Created by Kyuho Song and Boa Oh of Yanko Design to resemble a normal wall outlet as closely as possible, the charger can be taken and used anywhere, making it truly versatile.

window_socket33. The Berkeley-Darfur Stove: In recent years, health researchers have come to the conclusion that open-fire stoves lead to millions of deaths in the developing world. Hence this design by Potential Energy, a nonprofit dedicated to adapting and scaling technologies to help improve lives in the developing world. Featuring a tapered wind collar, a small fire box opening, nonaligned air vents that reduce the amount of wind allowed to stoke or snuff the fire, and ridges that ensure the optimal distance between the fire and pot, this stove is safe, fuel-efficient, and requires less wood to power. Over 25,000 units have been distributed to the Darfur region and Ethiopia so far.

gravitylight4. Gravity Light: Along with wood-burning stoves, kerosene-burning lamps are also a major health concern because of the fumes they create. Hence the simple and elegant solution known as the Gravity Light. Developed by the research initiative deciwatt.org, the device is powered by attaching a 20 lbs bag or rocks or dirt to a cord and then lifting it into place. The potential energy stored in that lifting motion is then gradually converted to electricity as the the bag descends over the course of about 30 minutes, powering a light or other electrical device in that time.

5. SOCCKET: Soccer is easily the most popular sport in the world, with millions of people playing daily. And in an attempt to turn this daily activity into an efficient form of energy that would replace kerosene lamps, Uncharted Play, a for-profit social enterprise, has created a ball that uses a kinetically-powered pendulum to generate and store electricity. After about 30 minutes of play, the ball stores enough energy to power an attachable LED lamp for 3 hours. Development of the product was funded via Kickstarter, and the first ones will ship in the next few weeks. A percentage of all retail sales will go to providing SOCCKETs to schools in the developing world.

two_SOCCKETsWhen it comes right down to it, these devices are especially innovative because of the way they marry  new technology to basic utility. In the end, what people get are things that are simple to use, effective, clean, and safe. And if history and sociological research have taught us anything, it’s that little things that make life healthier and easier have a profound impact on the lives of people.

Combined with large-scale concept (like 3D-printed structures) simple solutions like these are likely to make a big difference in the lives of millions of people. By ensuring that people have access to lighting and heating that does not compromise their health, is better for their environment, and less-labor intensive and expensive, the daily grind that characterizes far too many people’s existence is sure to get easier and allow for new opportunities.

Though they might seem like minor improvements, incremental changes have a way of adding up and can lead to serious and positive social change. And I for one am eager to see it happen!

Source: blogs.smithsonianmag.com