An Overview Of Our Solution
The UN estimates that in 2025 48 countries will suffer from serious water scarcity. It also published that the world population will grow from 7B now to almost 10B in 2050. So we have to produce 40% more food with less water. Agriculture uses 73% of the total available fresh water, in Africa 86%. The Groasis Technology is a planting technology to plant trees in combination with vegetables, while using 90% less water, avoiding the use of irrigation. Poor rural families living in areas with degraded land can plant productive trees combined with vegetables that create food and income. The Groasis Technology has a ‘triple 90 benefit’: 90% lower costs than drip irrigation, 90 less water use than drip irrigation and over 90% survival rate of the trees. We have 44 scientific and semi-scientific reports of plantings in 18 countries that demonstrate the positive results.
Who is this solution impacting?
Community Type
Urban
Suburban
Rural
Additional Information
- Population Impacted:
- Continent: Africa
General Information
Organization type
Société
Ecosystem (select all that apply)
Deserts
Forests
Freshwater
Oceans/Coasts
Population impacted
Sufficient food is important for everyone.
Challenge
Size of agricultural area
2 billion hectares of degraded farmland available (source http://www.wri.org/our-work/top-outcome/first-global-commitment-forest-restoration-launched)
Production quantity
5 tonnes per ha
People employed
0.5 direct and 0.5 indirect job per hectare
Solution
Describe your solution
The GT follows the principle of ‘more water in – less water out’. It consists of 5 steps that can either be done integrated, or each step taken individually. The 5 steps are:
1) The Groasis Terracedixx builds 15,000 meters terraces per hour. Infiltration from rain rises from 25 to 90%
2) The Groasis Capillary drill creates planting holes while keeping the capillary water transport system in the soil intact
3) The Growboxx® plant cocoon is an intelligent biodegradable bucket made of recycled paper in which one can plant 4 vegetables that grow hydroponically in combination with a tree that grows in the soil. The vegetables use 90% less water than traditional methods. After one year the Growboxx is degraded and the rural family has a living tree that starts to be productive within some years.
4) Mycorrhizae to replace fertilizers
5) The Growsafe plant protector that can grow up with the tree (like a telescope) and protect it against goats
It is not only a technical solution. The greatest challenge was how to make it cheap, and how to make it affordable and financeable. This is because banks do not finance poor rural families planting trees, since there is no cashflow in the first 5 years. The use of recycled paper makes the Growboxx cheap. However, still poor rural families do not have the funds to buy it. The combination with vegetables is the solution. The vegetables give food and cashflow, this makes it possible to sell the Growboxx with microcredit.
Implementation
Describe your implementation
Often rural families in dry countries on degraded land, are poor. They have no collateral and no entrance to finance. So our product must be cheap. They only way to do this, is to avoid every cost that does not add value. This means that in our business model we appoint local producers near the market. This way we avoid transport and import costs. We also create extra jobs locally and we start collection programs with governments of paper and carton. Our product is therefore a circular economy with a low cost price. The Licensed Producer (LP) pays Groasis a small fee per box and is allowed to sells direct in the market. This way we avoid too many middle man who add no value. We have just appointed the first LP in Mexico and are negotiating with 4 other LP’s in other countries. Through our activities in the previous years we know from our 31 distributors that the adoption technically is solved, but financially it was not. Now, with this policy of local production of paper boxes we have solved this. Aside of the price, the secure results are a key success factor. We guarantee 90% survival rate of trees with 90% less water use. E.g. Mexicali city is one of the hottest places on earth. Our distributor sold 75,000 Growboxxes for landscaping purpose. The city pays him only for each tree that is alive one year after planting. And we do this with 90% less water than they do now. The survival guarantee seems to be an important help also. The adoption is easy, we found that literate and illiterate both understand the logic. We have not found cultural resistance, since it works logic within the traditional agricultural habits. What was more difficult to overcome was the unbelieve by governmental institutes. For this reason we have worked with many institutes and universities. We have 44 scientific and semi-scientific reports from trials in 18 countries. Pls check here https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tbqw0rw4xxbbc77/AACkUJ8OwlxzFMftKnBaXA9Sa?dl=0
External connections
We work with institutes, NGO’s, universities and governments. E.g. the University of Valladolid in Spain, the University of the Peninsula of Santa Elena in Ecuador, the Desert Control Institute in Gansu China, the governmental BAIF Research Institute in India, the Charles Darwin Foundation on the Galapagos, etc. Their reports can be found in the Dropbox link of the previous paragraph.
Our technology is usable for agroforestry, forestry and ecosystem restoration. Agroforestry has been explained in previous paragraphs. Forestry worldwide in dry areas plants app. 1,100 saplings to get 200 trees per ha alive after 5 years. The cost price per alive tree is high. To get the same result we plant only 220 Growboxxes. They grow up to 300% faster as you read in the detailed Appendix 24 Gansu research report. We offer considerable reduction of costs for ecosystem restoration. We plant only 100 Growboxxes per ha with each 1 native tree and 4 native plants and bushes. We get 100 small colonies of pioneer trees/plants/bushes that start to cover the area through auto reforestation. The cost reduction compared to the classical method is over 50%.
Governments can start to develop programs in rural areas offering families microfinance to buy the technology, or simply donate them. We are negotiating a pilot with a government where they will donate in a province each family 10 Growboxxes, 10 trees, 40 seeds, 10 Growsafes and small hand tools to plant.
Results
What is the environmental or ecological challenge you are targeting with your solution?
The Groasis Ecological Water Saving Technology (GT) enables us to plant degraded land with trees and vegetables, and make it productive again without using irrigation. It does this with 90% less water use,
Describe the context in which you are operating
The GT is focusing on rising the efficiency of water use in agriculture. In general we can say that drought causes poverty. This leads to emigration from urban areas to cities, and from countries that are afflicted by drought, to countries that are wealthy. So if we are able to make degraded dry land productive again for an affordable investment, then we can create wealth, people will stay in their neighborhood, families will not get broken. Employment will rise, hunger will go. Wealth will grow.
How did you impact natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions?
Drip irrigation uses app 15 liters per tree per day during app. 150 days/year. That is 2,250 liters. With vines we have 2,500 plants per ha, so the use is 5,625,000 liters each year, eternally.
GT uses one time 60 liters while planting. With 2,500 plants that is 150,000 liters /year.
That is over 99% water saving.
When we plant the tree in combination with vegetables, we refill the box two weekly. In traditional agriculture in dry areas, the farmers make a small hole where they put daily, or two-daily water through flooding or with a can. Most of this water goes lost through evaporation.
The auto reforestation leads to considerable savings. Since ecosystem restoration is often funded by charity, it means that we can restore considerable larger areas with the same amount of money.
Agroforestry has impact on the soil quality, rain infiltration, humus growth, larger productivity. The shadow allows for second crops below the trees. Agroforestry is good for the environment and creates wealth.
Language(s)
Our website is in 5 languages / our YouTube channel in 13 languages / our app manual of planting is in 10 languages / Our CEO speaks 6 languages, and I speak 5 languages
Water
Our technology has the ‘triple 90 benefit’, meaning 90% lower costs, +90%survival rates and -90% water use
Food Security/Nutrition
Dry areas are not well prepared to produce seed crops. Seed crops need rain every week to germinate, and stay growing. Often this is not the case, so traditional flooding methods or spilling drip irrigation is installed. It is far more logic to plant trees. We have a list of 70 productive species that grow very well in dry areas and can easily overcome 9 months of annual drought. Irrigation also causes the need for expensive fertilizers and fungicides. Dry growing trees don't.
Economic/Sustainable Development
If we don’t help create wealth in countries that are afflicted by drought, we’ll see more wars, more emigration, more people leaving urban areas to go and live in cities. In order to feed the 10B people in 2050, we need actually more people producing food, not less, and we need more productivity, with less water use. This is what the GT offers.
Climate
Photosynthesis is the cheapest way to disconnect CO₂. According to the University of Stuttgart trees disconnect 15 to 25 tonnes of CO₂/ha. 30% of the disconnected C atoms are transported to the soil and becomes humus. For this reason trees make soil fertile. If we plant the 2 billion hectares of degraded land that WRI says is available, we can disconnect all the CO₂ that is emitted from fossil fuels and make our degraded land fertile with it. We call this ‘The Treesolution’.
Sustainability
We sell the Growboxx® plant cocoon between 1,67 and 2,49 Euros. Once we have the advantages of scale the price will be around 0.99 to 1.49. Any productive tree can make up this investment. So we are selling our products market-based. Recently in October 2016 the Dutch Government has awarded us National Icon of The Netherlands, for being one of the 3 most innovative companies of our country. In January the United Nations mentioned the Growboxx as one of the 15 most important solutions for 5 of the world biggest problems in their ‘2017 Global opportunity report’. These two events have incredibly helped to open doors for us that until recently remained closed. People now start to understand the impact of our inventions.
Return on investment
We started to develop the Groasis Ecological Water Saving Technology in 2003, always with our own money. Our investment so far is 14,661,000 Euros. We have no bank debt. We do have debt at friends and family for a total of 750K. Based on the orders we have, we start to be profitable in 2018. I sold my company in 2003 because it thought someone had to solve the problem of water inefficiency use. In my heart I am an idealist, but with my brains I stay business wise. We cannot solve this water problem with charity and donations, it's too big for that. It must be solved based on business.
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Replication and Scale
How could we successfully replicate this solution elsewhere?
The production process of the Growboxx is equal to that of egg cartons. Weekly app. 1 billion egg cartons are produced. So production capacity is no issue. Our business model is to appoint licensed producers. The Growboxx can be produced on the standard egg carton lines, so if there’s more business in Growboxxes, the producers will change to our product. Through choosing this way of working the investments are low (we explained earlier why: our client has little money) , the licensed producers only have to invest in molds and can start to produce. Through choosing to develop the design of the Growboxx to be able to be produced on standard available production lines, we have enabled local production close to the market. The licensed producer pays a small fee to us. Our profit starts only when huge numbers are produced. In order to speed up growth and build our organization we are at present searching for 4,8M Euros investment.