"Malnutrition Matters (www.malnutrition.org) is a small meta-social business (registered non-profit), that has made a contribution to increased food security, using sustainable micro-enterprise to benefit not only BoP consumers / beneficiaries, but also rural women entrepreneurs and smallholder farmers. In 2005 Malnutrition Matters (MM) had 13 small-scale soymilk systems in 8 countries, with the help of a US-based partner, Africare. MM now has over 300 small-scale systems deployed in 31 countries, 19 of them in sub-Saharan Africa, with the help of dozens of partners. The other 12 countries are: Belize, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Myanmar, North Korea, St. Lucia, Thailand, USA. There are now over 130,000 daily beneficiaries / customers getting additional protein and micro-nutrient-rich food, thanks to these 300 installations.
The problem we are addressing, chronic moderate malnutrition in developing countries, especially lack of protein and micro-nutrients, is a significant and fundamental problem for almost all developing countries. The approach of MM, to help incubate soy-food micro-enterprises in rural and urban settings, enables this problem to be tackled in a sustainable way, that creates self-funding employment for women and youth, in their own locale rather than far afield. The MM approach also creates economic benefit for local farmers who can grow and sell soybeans for higher profit than other crops. It ensures a virtuous economic cycle where there is no profit leakage to outside companies, allowing the revenues and profits to remain in the local community, for maximum local economic benefit. The MM approach of direct human consumption of soy foods, is also far superior to the animal protein cycle from an environmental perspective, which requires 10 - 20 times as much land, energy and water to provide animal protein for human consumption. The soy foods are also typically 1/4 to 1/3 the cost of the equivalent animal protein, which enables the BoP pool to benefit."
regards,
Hart
Sr. Hart Jansson