We Develop Bioeconomies!
The mission of Bioeconomy Developments NPC (“BioEcoDev”) is the preparation and implementation of small rural projects or businesses in the agriculture and forestry sectors.
By definition, the bioeconomy encompasses the production of renewable biological resources and their conversion into food, feed, biobased products and bioenergy via innovative and efficient technologies.
On the one side, South Africa is one of the world’s most biologically diverse country and on the other side, we have a significant rate of unemployment. The team at BioEcoDev is committed to put people into jobs by creating projects or enterprises. What ever BioEcoDev does, its success is measured by the solutions we find for or impact we have on:
Society (especially with regard to employment of women and youth),
Environment (e.g. climate change mitigation, water/resources efficiencies) and
Food security.
The bioeconomy is not only in its infancy in South Africa, but also at an early stages of development in the rest of Africa and the world. The opportunities are therefore big. The following two examples illustrate the areas that BioEcoDev will use as platforms to grow the green economy in rural South Africa:
Platform 1: Globally, biomass is planned to account for 60% of total renewable energy use by 2030 (IRENA): ±40% of this total would originate from agricultural residues and wastes, i.e. a multi-trillion tonnes per annum business! In South Africa, there no infrastructure for a biomass based economy (e.g. power, fuels or chemicals).
Platform 2: The 2015 WWF report, “Farming Facts and Figures” (a snapshot of the country’s agricultural sector) highlights that only a handful of farmers feed the country: it is estimated that 20% of South Africa’s farms supply 80% of the food in the formal retail chain. Commercial farmers account for 95% of the country’s locally produced food. This suggests that the remaining 5% of food is produced by the 220 000 emerging farmers and the 2 million subsistence farmers in the country. – Unemployment rate in South Africa is over 25% (4th quarter 2015).
BioEcoDev uses a practical combination of knowledge and technologies to develop value-chains that benefit small-scale farmers or foresters to access (new) markets and/or grow new or additional crops.
We are currently building the “not for profit business” and its communications platform to provide comprehensive information of our projects, in order to solicit donor or grant finance for a selection of projects that are “shovel ready”.
Source: BioEcoDev.org
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