nutrition-based micro-enterprises in rural areas, primarily run by women
"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
1. If you could make an intervention at the side event on rural women at the 8th session of the Open Working Group in New York, what would be its key message?
As the Copenhagen Consensus (2012) has concluded, the consumption of protein and micro-nutrients is the most cost-effective way to address health and physical development among the working poor in developing countries. This objective can be achieved in a sustainable manner, with new jobs being created for rural women. Malnutrition Matters has implemented numerous projects in rural Asia and sub-Saharan Africa where micro-nutrient-fortified soymilk is made and profitably sold to consumers making ca. $2/day. The stainless steel VitaGoat system, designed by Malnutrition Matters, which pressure-cooks 30L of soymilk per hour at 110C in a fuel-efficient way, with no need for electricity, running water or packaging, can operate in the most basic environment. It can provide a 200ml serving of soymilk with 7g of protein and the RDA for Vitamin A, Iron, Vitamin B12, Vitamin C, Folic Acid and Zinc for less than 7 cents per serving. The VitaGoat can reach 1,000 beneficiaries per day and create 4 to 5 full-time rural jobs per system. There are 250 VitaGoats installed today, with over 100,000 continuous beneficiaries, and some have been operating for 10 years. Local produce is used and there is no 'profit eakage' outside the community. A quadruple benefit is realized: significant improvement in nutrition affordable to rural poor, sustainable job creation for rural women, increased demand and revenue for local produce (soybeans) and much lower impact on the environment than with animal protein. See malnutrition.org for more information. Spreadsheets are avialable to demonstrate the sustainable business model realized at various operational sites.
2. Rural women are often described as critical agents of change in discussions on sustainable development goals. To what extent would the achievement of food and nutrition security for rural women help accelerate sustainable development?
I believe that achieving food and nutrition security for rural women in a sustainable manner, is itself a vital part of sustainable development. Because it would result in much less malnutrition and stunting, the populace would experience much greater 'value in life-years' (VLYs) due to good health and prper physical and neurological development, which would enable the GDP of that region / country to increase substantially. Please see the attached comment on the recent Lancet Commission : 'Global Health 2035' for further thoughts on the role of nutrition in achieving greater health and contributing to sustainable development.
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I would like to make the following contribution to the current discussion. It is an example of how civil society, using social business as a vehicle, can make useful and sustainable contributions to improve nutrition in the rural areas where it is needed most.
"Civil Society Contribution to Improve Nutrition – An Example
- submitted by Malnutrition Matters (www.malnutrition.org) Sept 2013
Malnutrition Matters (MM) is a Canadian-registered non-profit, founded in the year 2000. MM is committed to alleviating malnutrition by creating sustainable micro-enterprises in rural areas, which are centered on local processing to provide affordable food with increased protein and micronutrients. MM has helped establish over 240 sites worldwide to produce soymilk from local soybeans. The large majority of these sites use equipment that does not require electricity or running water, and which can provide supplemental protein-rich nutrition for 1,000 people or more per day, at the cost of about 4 cents a cup. Each one-cup serving (or 250 ml) contains 7 g of whole protein, which is less than half of the cost of dairy milk. The MM sites serve over 150,000 beneficiaries daily. Locally made soymilk is the most cost-effective way to provide micro-nutrient fortified whole protein to rural populations, where often over 50% of the children are malnourished, with protein and micro-nutrient deficiencies often the most acute. Capital cost for the equipment is less than $5,000 per site and sites typically become self-sufficient in less than one year.
The majority of these sites have been developed with other civil society partners, some of which are listed below. MM itself is a sustainable social business, with less than 20% of revenue from sponsorships.
MM has also recently established over solar food drying 20 sites. These sites use solar-only food driers to dry up to 30kg of food (such as tomato, mango, peppers, guava, papaya, fish) per day, per unit. This increases food security by enabling part of the harvest to be preserved in simple plastic bags for up to one year, rather than having surplus harvest rot. The SolarFlex dryer capital cost is $1,400 per unit.
MM’s partners include :
- African Development Bank (Ghana)
- Africare
- Alpro NV (Belgium)
- Humana People to People (Malawi, Mozambique)
- OIC International / USAID (Liberia)
- TSBF/CIAT (Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda)
- World Bank Development Marketplace
- World Concern / ZOA / EU (Myanmar)
Please visit www.malnutrition.org to see YouTube videos of various sites in action.
thanks,
Hart
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Hart Jansson
M. Hart Jansson
Dear Moderator,
Eggs are a useful element in the challenging fight to improve nutrition. Let us not forget that there are also other plentiful foods that are as useful as eggs, and better suited to meet the challenge of sustainably improving nutrition for the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) where incomes are between $1 and $3 per day. As the attached brief (Cost of Protein in Africa) shows, the retail cost of protein provided via soy foods (either soy flour or locally produced soymilk/yoghurt) is less than half the cost of eggs. Soymilk can also be supplemented readily with low-cost micro-nutrient powders to provide Vit A,B,C,E, folic acid, iron and zinc , among others, to provide a super-nutritious, yet more affordable and highly accessible food supplement. Also, egg production uses several times more energy, water and land (to grow the chicken feed) than soybean cultivation for human consumption, and produces 10x greenhouse gas emissions, therefore is less environmentally sustainable.
Every possible solution to fight chronic malnutrition should be considered and deployed. There is no single food commodity that provides the solution, but let's keep our sights on accessibility, affordability and sustainability.
best regards,
Hart Jansson, President
Malnutrition Matters