Rockefeller Foundation & Pyxera Global
Tomato Post-Harvest Loss In Nigeria
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in partnership with PYXERA Global, to support a Rockefeller Foundation initiative to reduce Post Harvest Loss (PHL) in northern Nigeria, integrated Human Centered Design methods in a three-phase project. SCAD Alumni living in Africa conducted contextual research with stakeholders in the tomato value chain and the supporting basket value chain. Using the insights and research form the field, a SCAD Collaboration Learning Center class developed a pilot project to reduce PHL by approaching the human factor of the loss, infusing more care into the system. A SCAD Alumni who participated in the development of the pilot, traveled to Nigeria to develop and implement a training-of-trainers program to transfer the knowledge to the 14.000 smallholder farmers affiliated with the project.
Position: Design Lead.
Focus: mitigating tomato post-harvest loss in Nigeria, empower smallholder farmers and women entrepreneurs, local value creation.
Services: research, development, and implementation of technologies for post-harvest loss mitigation, trainer of trainers program design, capacity building, leading multidisciplinary and multicultural teams.
Phase 1. An assessment of handling technologies, packaging, and processing.
To better understand the tomato farming industry, a field research was conducted to make sense of the tomato value chain and its relationship with the basket value chain. SCAD Alumni utilized a Human Centered Design (HCD) approach to include contextual research activities grounded in empathy, creativity, and iteration. It was key to understand the practices, behavioral patterns, the social and political environment, and cultural influences that impact the actions and decision of the farmers, basket makers, and other relevant stakeholders. This assessment was a fundamental guide for the creation of the suite of solutions generated in the second phase of the project.
Phase 2. Developing a pilot project.
Nigeria produces close to 2 million metric tons of tomatoes yearly, exhibiting that the Nigerian tomato can prove to be a lucrative industry for the country. However, locally there is up to 75% Post Harvest Loss (PHL) in the tomato value chain. PHL is when a crop incurs a loss between the moment of harvest and before reaching the consumer. The seeds, soil, and water have produced good crop, but the human handling after harvest produces irreversible losses. Better inputs can only take crop improvement so far, but by infusing more care into the system can reduce losses incurred after harvest.
Our team tackled this issue of post harvest loss using Human Centered Design, an approach put together and utilized by designers to solve seemingly unsolvable, complex issues. Our diverse team, comprised of ten members, embarked on a ten week journey of secondary and primary research. After gathering data points, we affinitized the data and ideated solutions around what the research dictated. Our design principles focused around awareness, education, and building relationships.
These are the three solutions created.
Education - Connect and Grow: a tomato processing toolkit for Nigerian women.
Our toolkit is based on a toolkit from Frog Design inc., which looks to specifically address complex issues within Human Centered Design through creative collaboration.
The toolkit hopes to reduce PHL by putting care into the system via women engaging in collaborative efforts of processing tomato products.
Our goal is to have tomato processing facilitate food stability, financial stability and food quality while embracing women as the catalyst of change in the tomato value chain.
Awareness – Aggregation Center
Based on our research and other case studies in and around Africa, we learned that aggregation centers can effectively reduce PHL. In this case, we have developed a game for Pyxera to play with farmers, investors and partners through which they can visualize together what works best for the needs of all stakeholders at each aggregation center. In the game, there are pieces representing storage, cooling, waste management, processing, administration offices, demoing crop, transport, off-loading and a meeting area. These can be moved around and used to identify which of them is of most importance and should be worked towards first. By using this tool, Pyxera representatives can facilitate discussion and collaboration between farmers and potential partners to spread awareness of the potential of aggregation centers.
Relationships – Tomato Festival.
With this festival, we aim to build a community around the tomato by bringing people together for a cause. The intent is to impart knowledge by exciting and educating the community of different possibilities. Also, we wanted to provide Pyxera an easy tool to facilitate a pilot, and eventually train people in the community to carry it on, with the help of cards we have provided as an easy tool to facilitate conversations.
Phase 3. Implementation of the tools. Training-of-trainers program.
As a final stage of the project, the tools were introduced to the YieldWise Nigeria Project in July 2017. We developed a training-of-trainers program where a selected group of community workers learned how to use "Building an Aggregation Center Game" and "Connect and Grow" to transfer the knowledge to the 14.000 smallholder farmers affiliated with the project. The training proved the effectiveness of the tools by encouraging constructive behavior. The tools sparked conversations between the experts and the farmers—and among the community itself—enhancing the quality of their dialogue. The professional and technical experts could align their goals with the community’s interests while the farmers were able to use their own knowledge to reshape their practice. Furthermore, The Human-Centered Design of the tools made the implementation easy and effective. With a three-week training-of-trainers program, the trainers and the program administrators were able to reproduce the learnings with the community easily. In a month, they could organize themselves to start building the first PHL Hub (Aggregation Center), and more than 40 women used the “Create and Grow” toolkit and began working together to create new products based on processed tomatoes.