Ecotutu, a cold-chain storage company, has called for increased awareness of cold-chain solutions among local farmers and traders to reduce post-harvest losses.
A co-founder of Ecotutu, Mr. Michael Akinsete, made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on Sunday in Lagos.
NAN reports that Ecotutu is a Nigerian cleantech company founded in 2020 to address the significant issue of post-harvest food loss by providing affordable, solar-powered cold storage solutions to farmers and traders in developing countries.
Their innovation, which combines solar energy with evaporation technology and a pay-as-you-chill service model, helps to reduce spoilage, improve the economic value of produce, and boost food security.
Akinsete said increased cold-chain solutions awareness among local farmers and traders would curb the rate of post-harvest losses in the sector.
“There is a lot of miscommunication and lack of knowledge in the cold-chain space, and that is one of the things that we are doing in terms of educating the target audience.
“From the smaller farmers, traders, aggregators, as well as businesses that need the cold-chain solution, but probably do not even think that they can afford it. Some of them do not even know how to go about it.
“So, we have introduced some solutions and initiatives to address post-harvest losses problems in the agriculture space.
“For instance, we actually just launched a post-harvest handling and cold storage manual. This is something that we did to educate the target audience, some people think that once they keep their produce in cold storage, no matter what state it is in, it is safe.
“But that is not so, there are things we do like pre-cooling and sorting before storage. So many farmers lack this education,” Akinsete said.
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He also urged the farmers and traders not to see the value addition of cold-chain solutions as luxury but a necessity to boost their profits.
“Some farmers or perishable food items traders feel cold chain is nice to have or feel it is luxury. They feel why should I keep my produce in cold-chain storage when I can still sell it in any state it is in.
“They feel that why should they add more cost to their expenses, what they don’t realize is that the cost of cold-chain storage is actually minute compared to the gains that they will get out of it.
“So, these are the efforts that we continue to put in to ensure that they are aware of the importance of cold-chain storage in preventing post-harvest losses.
“We deploy in two models. We do cool as a service, which is where the smallholder farmers, the market traders, even aggregator businesses are able to access the cold-chain solutions and pay token pack rates per day. So, they are essentially paying rent per day.
“So, we keep their stuff, whether it is tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, celery and even protein like soft chicken, meat or fish,” he said.
The expert called for more farmers adoption of cold-chain solutions for sustainable agriculture practice and food security.
“We actually held a roundtable in June, to bring stakeholders together to see, how we across different verticals address the challenges of the cold chain solutions.
“There is a big knowledge gap as regards cold chain solutions in the country. We also have the policy gap and the finance gap.
“We are also doing initiatives like the cold-chain ambassadors across the different geopolitical zones.
“We are engaging youths who are very interested in agriculture, who already practice agriculture, to be the voice for coaching within their communities and propagate the adoption of cold-chain solutions to prevent post-harvest losses,” the expert said.
NAN
