Impact
Our network of farmers grows local avocado varieties, which normally waste away without a market.
By establishing production centers and organizing transport, we provide farmers with the opportunity to transform their overlooked avocados into high quality, highly demanded oil.
We then purchase the processed oil directly from them at a rate averaging five times higher than the local market price, often doubling farmers’ annual income.
It brings us deep joy to be able to say we are fostering direct and indirect social, economic and environmental impact through this ongoing process.
economic
• 8,400 farmers have increased earnings from the selling us their avocados
• 9 permanent employees
• Families in 28 villages across 7 regions of Tanzania benefitting from higher and more reliable income
• Financial Stability- By incorporating the selling of their avocados to Avomeru, farmers diversify their source of income, decreasing their dependency on fluctuating and unreliable cash crops
• Supplemental Earnings- Farmers are paid about 6 times higher than the local market price for their avocados
Let us break that down for you
A village farmer would typically receive about 2,000 Tanzanian Shillings (TZS) for 70 Avocados… that’s about 0.80 US cents, or 0.01 cent per piece.
We purchase a liter of avocado oil (which takes about 43 avocados to produce) at $3 US.. which equated to 7 cents each.
This may sound small, but just being able to sell the avocados from their trees provides about an additional $830 US/ year, which alone often accounts for more than DOUBLING their entire annual income.
Environmental
• Showing local varieties have value- contributing to promotion and preservation of local and diversity, as opposed to the ever-expanding mass production of foreign varieties bred for the export market
• The rural farmers we work with use inter-cropping with nourishes the soil, whereas the farms focused on export varieties tend to use a short-sighted mono-cropping method which depletes the soil and strips the of land’s its future producing capacity
• Seeing as it takes 40-50 avocados to make just one 1 Litre of Oil, and we've made over 10,000 Litres of oil, we can confidently say we have saved heaps and mounds of local avocados from going to waste and rotting away!
Our three years goal is to achieve production capacity of 103 000 L per year… so you do the math!
• Training farmers on planting new trees
• We are well on our way to having a completely zero waste model!
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skin is used to produce biogas that is later reversed and reused to pasteurize the oil to reduce usage of woods, gas or electricity
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pits are re-grown into seedlings that is later used for grafting into different avocado varieties
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pulp is used as feed for pigs and as a booster when mixed into other animal feeds
• Local prototyping and building of press machine (when possible with availability of materials) instead of import
Social
• Peace of mind, reduced stress due to reliable source of earnings
• Hope and freedom - supplemental income allowing for expanded options and have seen the extra cash used for school fees, health expenses, assets and investment
• Pride
- participation, engagement in the business
- value in local variety avocados
- local prototyping initiatives
