Biogenesis Organic Sweet Potatoes

Producing organic sweet potatoes while empowering women
2019 SEED Africa Award Sustainable Agriculture Goromonzi District, Zimbabwe

BOSP follows a consumer-centric and market-based approach, selling via different channels and to different customer segments. This includes door-to-door sales, as well as approaching farmers' markets and supermarkets. Roadside-stall-sales are looked after by a freelance youth group earning a commission. Vines are directly sold to other farmers for their cultivation. As the soil in Zimbabwe is very suitable for growing sweet potatoes and the markets for the product is developing rapidly, the project holds great opportunities for scaling.

Eco-Inclusive Impacts

The enterprise creates jobs by selling its product and offering women and school leavers a chance to become out-growers of sweet-potatoes. BOSP also sets up capital asset structures and trains citizens to support themselves. The female workers have also formed a savings group to finance necessary goods and therefore improving their daily lives.

BOSP practices conservation tillage, crop rotation, and plant cover crops to improve organic matter. As an organic fertiliser, they are using innovative vermicompost from earthworms.

 

  • Creating jobs for 7 women and 5 boys (school leavers) as a door-to-door direct sales team supervised by a single mother
  • Providing economic opportunities for youth through a roadside stall where they earn commission
  • Ensuring the provision of full industrial safety gear for employees
  • Empowering women, who have formed a sports team and a savings group
  • Practicing conservation tillage and crop rotation
  • Planting cover crops to improve organic matter and loosen hard-packed soils
  • Planting bio-fortified vines
  • Using of tissue-cultured planting materials
  • Setting up capital asset structures for communities
  • Training unemployed community members to become active in out-growing schemes

Multimedia

Partners

This enterprise is supported through its partnerships with various stakeholders, ranging from national and international organisations, investors, research institutes, suppliers, governmental bodies, NGOs, other social and environmental enterprises and more.

Zimearth Worms Farms supplies nutrient-rich vermicompost organic earthworm-processed biofertilizers and trains BOSP to convert waste into vermicompost.

Zimtrade is a government organisation that assists BOSP to meet voluntary and mandatory compliance requirements for the international market.

University of Zimbabwe, Faculty of Agriculture supports with laboratory and technical facilities to enhance crop production and processing

SEED Library

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Tonderai Nhura
Tel: +263773127409

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