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If you're going to improve the conditions of
agriculture in emerging markets, the easiest way to make an impact is just
cutting down on post-harvest losses.
It's a tragedy that 50 percent of all product that a farmer in Africa
reaps off his field, goes to the birds, the rodents, the insects,
or just gets wasted due to mold. So if you're trying to create a tangible
benefit for these communities, the first thing that you need to do is just
decrease those losses and that's what our technology enables.
I think that Africa has the opportunity to be the next bread basket of the world.
If you look at the agricultural systems and the
arable land that's available in Africa, there's no comparison
across the rest of the globe. The soil there is extremely fertile
and, without any of the really highly
genetically modified seed technologies or fertilizers, etc.
you have very good yields in Africa. You have a lot of land and you have a
lot of people who are invested in agriculture.
Ninety percent of the population in Africa derives their living from
agriculture. So you have a huge base of people to work with.
And it's about creating these sort of ancillary businesses, processing
businesses,
storage businesses, etc. that are going to take them out of
that subsistence farming into commercial farming into modern agriculture.