Agricultural tech entrepreneurs set out to 'change the lives' of low income farmers

Pastoral is an ‘ambitious venture’, co-designed and incubated by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and UK-based developmental innovation company Karakoram. Born out of a desire to make a real impact, Pastoral focuses on providing an effective solution to the environmentally disruptive farming practices of low-and-middle-income countries.

When describing the history behind the venture, Pastoral CEO and co-founder Josh Thomas says: “Many don’t realise the negative environmental impact of too many livestock animals coexisting within the same piece of land.

“This is an issue in around 80 per cent of the world, particularly low-income countries where farmers don’t have access to modern solutions and practical data and are therefore not equipped with the tools they need to make informed decisions and action change.”

The team began their venture by carrying out product and user trials in Uzbekistan, building a rapport with the leaders of a farming collective comprising thousands of livestock farmers earning as little as five dollars per day. 35-37 per cent of Uzbekistan’s pastureland can currently be considered poor or low productivity, with an estimated 1.5% of Uzbekistan’s land becoming degraded every year.

“Our priorities involve reducing land degradation and CO2 emissions, as well as helping low-income farmers make a profit by providing them with reliable data,” says Josh.

The team identified the possibility to reduce pasture degradation and CO2 emissions by 30 per cent. With that in mind, they are keen to scale up Pastoral to include more countries, namely Nigeria, India, and Indonesia, which hold the largest proportion of livestock on earth.

“With 100 per cent market penetration, we have estimated there would be a reduction of 8 megatonnes of CO2 in Uzbekistan alone,” explains Shea McManigal, CFO and co-founder of Pastoral.

“To put things into perspective, livestock farming in Uzbekistan emits 24 megatonnes of CO2 annually, which equates to powering 33.6m homes for one year or extracting 255 million barrels of oil. That’s why Pastoral has the potential to make such an enormous difference,” he adds.

Pastoral, as well as their partners at the UNDP and Karakoram, aim to expand the reach of the venture and develop it further to meet the requirements of secondary markets and add more features and sources of data.

By Mark Adair – Correspondent, Bdaily

• Add me on LinkedIn and Twitter to keep up to date
• And follow Bdaily on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
• Submit press releases to editor@bdaily.co.uk for consideration

Looking to promote your product/service to SME businesses in your region? Find out how Bdaily can help →