Current Projects

Project 5. Develop inexpensive Sustainable Agriculture Kits (SAKs) for subsistence farmers

Project Founder: Manish N. Raizada (raizada@uoguelph.ca)

SAK Overview

There already exists excellent, peer-reviewed scientific knowledge, good seed stocks, inexpensive tools, small business ideas, and environmentally-friendly indigenous knowledge to help poor farmers with their fertilizer and other needs -- but these are not being taken advantage of fully. What is lacking is a means to package, deliver and SHARE these "technologies" to the 2 billion people earning $1-$2 per day. Founded in 2008 by Prof. Raizada, SAKs are $10 commercial toolkits to make the world's best scientific and indigenous technologies and practices available to the world's ~2 billion rural poor people involved in agriculture --- at the correct economy of scale. 

SAK Components
Each Sustainable Agriculture Kit (SAK) consists of 3 components:
(i) SAK Seeds -- 100-200 colour-coded seed packages for improved staple crops from international and domestic institutions; seeds to enhance biodiversity in order to overcome global competition and hence trade subsidies; seeds to reintroduce more nutritious, drought-tolerant indigenous crops; seeds to improve vitamin and mineral nutrition from local green vegetables; seeds to replace synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides with plants that can partially replace these requirements; seeds for better animal feed; seeds for medicinal plants to combat local diseases (including HIV and malaria); and seeds for cash income generation;
(ii) SAK Tools -- $1 technologies including low-cost post-harvest seed storage bags and other green bags that prevent fruits and vegetables from rotting, and additional tools to facilitate food processing and small businesses from plants. The real profit in agriculture comes after the seed is harvested, for example turning wheat into bread.
(iii) SAK Picture Book -- Knowledge transfer books to explain use of the above seeds and tools, and to communicate the world's best peer-reviewed scientific knowledge and indigenous knowledge to illiterate peoples to empower them and encourage them to experiment, including breeding their own hybrid seeds, techniques to conserve water and improved animal feed based on local plants.

SAK Philosophy
SAKs represent a comprehensive, holistic approach to sustainable agriculture, with one main goal -- to generate profit locally in the world's most desperate nations. But each SAK kit is not being built from the top-down, but rather from the bottom-up, at the grassroots level based on months of surveys, and each SAK is designed and built locally using local experts, and then sold locally using local salespeople -- all to create jobs. Each step of the SAK chain is profit- and job-oriented in order to be sustainable. Women, especially, will be involved in each step of the process, especially to determine what the local needs are.  There is no universal SAK, as there is no universal type of agricultural system, cultural preference, soil type or climate. There is no magic bullet in agriculture.

SAK Design Rationale
The SAK concept is based on examining history: in the United States, for example, agriculture became successful in the early-mid 1900s because of publicly-funded, agricultural extension officers who communicated good agronomic practices to farmers, combined with the private sector, who made improved seeds and technologies available. The SAK Picture Books for illiterate peoples are an attempt to mimic the function of extension officers, and SAK Seeds/SAK Tools are an attempt to make technologies available to poor people at the correct economy of scale, with private-sector know-how and innovation.
SAKs cannot take the place, of course, of a good public extension system, expert breeders or even synthetic fertilizers, which are very effective, and should be made more accessible through subsidies.

SAK Project Goals and Targets
SAKs target the bottom 30-40 nations in the UNDP Human Development Index -- nations that do not have an extension system, local breeders, access to fertilizers or a private sector, due to a history of war, corruption or disaster. Examples of such nations include Liberia, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Haiti, and DR Congo. International donor institutions do not work effectively in these nations due to a lack of security, poor infrastructure and because they often require government-government or institution-government agreements, and yet it is the local government which is the source of the problem and must be bypassed. Alternatively, where there is now a good government in place, the private sector may not yet be willing to invest in these high-risk nations. To help these nations emerge out of poverty and chaos, however, their farmers must be helped, as farming is the main source of income for 70-95% of the population in most of the UNDP HDI-bottom 30 countries.

Our initial target is modest, however, for local SAK organizations working with Prof. Raizada to sell and distribute 10,000 SAKs in our initial target nations by 2013.  The goal is for 1 SAK to help 10 people (1 family of 5 and 1 additional family of 5). We want a family to purchase a SAK kit only once, and thereafter to generate their own seeds. We hope to learn lessons from these experiences to share with the international community, in order to then facilitate parallel SAK projects around the world.

The benefits provided by a SAK should not be overstated ---- the goal is modest, to raise incomes by $100-$500/family per year, but this will allow, for example, families to afford to send girls to school, one of the best drivers of sustained social progress.

More Information

The SAKglobal movement is still in the early stages: we are building the organization locally in each target nation, starting local surveys, gathering technologies and starting work on the first SAK Picture Book. More information can be found at SAKglobal.org
Please contact Manish Raizada directly to learn more (raizada@uoguelph.ca or 1-519-824-4120 x53396).