Land stewards deserve to have a voice.
we need to include farmers in the conversation.
We cannot claim that we value life if we are not being proactive on the tragic state of our global food system.No matter which angle you look at the global food system from, there are compounding and worsening crises.
1) The average age of farmers worldwide is in the fifties to sixties range. Their children and grandchildren not interested in preserving the generational livelihoods because it is not lucrative enough.
2) Soil health is declining worldwide and effecting crop yields. Crop losses are projected to be as high as 80% for some farmers in Italy and 50% for the UK in 2022. What happens when rich countries cannot produce enough to feed their population's demands? They purchase from the poorer countries. The burden is always ending up on the backs of the poor.
3) Farmers are falling ill, often to their death, or committing suicide from utter despair. For too long, farmers have been squeezed, cornered, and burdened into desperate situations. BioTech and equipment companies have been endlessly extracting from any possible stream. Most consumers are totally unaware of these realities. But we all continue to eat every single day.
4) Bill Gates proclaims he will save the Africa's food system but he has already tried doing so in a $1B project and failed miserably . How many farmer lives and livelihoods could he have saved if he merely allocated that $1B to relieving farmers from the debts that force them to make poor land management decisions because they simply have no cushion to take risks? Risks that will lead to a more regenerative food system given some time. Centralized solutions doing more of the same reductive, efficiency-driven practices will not work . What will work is decentralized multi-crop operations with integrated livestock. "Don't put all your eggs in one basket". The same wisdom needs to be applied to our food system, and urgently.
5) Our lives depend on farmers. It is absurd that we allow big food companies to continue to abuse farmers because of our own ignorance about the true realities on the fields.
This is why we need to include land stewards in technological systems design conversations.
' Jabali ' means 'rock' in Swahili. We aspire to be a grounding figure for the tech world; a foundational environment that sets a precedent for coherence as we innovate technologies that radically affect peoples' lives, nature, and ourselves.
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ElevatorPitchVersion - Abbreviated
Proof of Concept Project -
Our first step on our journey to our *North Star* (see below) project is a blockchain education curriculum specifically for Kenyan farmers. Farmers need to be included in the conversation about innovations to help improve their livelihoods.
Web2 did not disrupt the food system because they do not focus on relating to farmers. The same goes for academics. No one understands the problems better than the land stewards who are out on the fields every day themselves, depending on their own relationship to the land in order to survive.. This is why we want to include them in the technological conversation rather than push products onto them that they might not even need. Click the preview image for the pilot pitch deck.
The "North Star" Project -
Our end game is a place based innovation hub that is integrated in an agrarian community in Kenya where technologists and farmers can relate and collaborate on a regular basis. Think of it as an IRL (in-real-life) accelerator or incubator. Imagine builders innovating solutions with farmers, for farmers while also being able to live test the solutions with farmers they have developed relationships with in the community.
We understand this has not been done before and it might sound a bit crazy. But this is the way to decentralize food production while continuing to develop technologies that will *help* farmers rather than victimize them further.
For a more complete understanding of the project, click the preview image to navigate to the vision document.