DAY 16
You’ve Helped Create a Sustainable Income for One Rural Farmer
Together with Little Sun
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What is your positive impact today?
Today, you’ve helped create a sustainable income for one rural farmer in Zambia. You’ve helped achieve this with your contribution to a Community Solar Hub. This Hub is a centralized, solar-powered space for rural, smallholder dairy farmers that tests and cools milk quickly for conservation reducing the loss of milk. It also operates as a milk collection center, connecting the rural farmer you supported—and many dozens more—to the formal market.
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Why is your impact important?
Zambian’s smallholder farmers face considerable hardships in adapting to the changing climate given their limited access to productive assets and market opportunities. Here, the dairy value chain stands out, with a disconnect between the many cows held by smallholder farmers and the formal market, where dairy companies are looking to buy milk to replace milk imports. Currently, cows in Zambia yield 630 million liters of milk per year but 540 million liters are not formally sold.
Most milk generated is by cows owned by smallholder farmers, which are excluded from the national milk market. Dairy companies in Zambia would be willing off-takers but require a minimum quantity and quality. Single smallholder farmers can not deliver on either. A milk collection center with a refrigeration system powered by a Community Solar Hub solves both of these problems.
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How are we achieving your impact together?
Our impactful partner for today is Little Sun. Beyond their current work in Zambia, Little Sun has a 12-year history of delivering access to solar energy, electrifying health centers and schools, and piloting solar-powered productive use applications.
Their first Community Energy Hub (planned together with the government and the Dairy Association of Zambia) already offers a sustainable income to many dozens of smallholder farmers. In the short-term, they’ll build 7 more Community Energy Hubs and their medium-term goal is to grow this number to 200.
More About Little Sun
Little Sun was founded in 2012 by artist Olafur Eliasson and engineer Frederik Ottesen. Their mission is to design and deliver affordable clean energy solutions and inspire people to take climate action.
I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.
– Thomas Edison; inventor of the light bulb and electric utility system, recorded sound, motion pictures, R&D labs, and the alkaline family of storage batteries
