CleanStar Mozambique: A commercial model for increasing food and energy security by integrating smallholder-based farming, bioprocessing, and retail distribution of food and clean energy products

摘要

CleanStar Mozambique is a vertically-integrated food,energy and forest protection business with operations in agriculture,agro-processing and retail.The company enables smallholder farmers in central Mozambique to transition from slash and burn subsistence farming to sustainable surplus production by promoting agroforestry,crop rotation and intercropping practices for rainfed cassava,cowpeas,pigeonpeas,sorghum,groundnuts and soybean cultivation.CleanStar's extension staff supplies improved planting material and technical assistance to over 1000 associated smallholder farmers,and guarantees to buy all the surpluses produced using CleanStar's farming model.CleanStar pre-processes and stores these crops at its local procurement centers,and then transports them in bulk to a central bioprocessing plant for conversion into a range of food products and an ethanol-based cooking fuel.CleanStar sells the cooking fuel in daily(1 liter)and weekly(5 liter)quantities along with a safe and efficient ethanol stove--at prices that are competitive with charcoal--via a network of company shops and street vendor resellers in Maputo.