Esther is giving thanks this Giving Tuesday for the gift of the INMED Aquaponics Social Enterprise, which has transformed her drought-ravaged farm into an award-winning agro-enterprise that is supporting her family and creating jobs and food security for her impoverished community on the edge of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa. We're scaling the INMED ASE to Jamaica, Peru, Brazil and the USA to transition historically marginalized populations from poverty to self-reliance.
More than 2 billion people live in extreme poverty around the world--80% of whom rely on agriculture for their daily survival. Severe climate events are forcing an alarming number of farmers like Esther off their land, plunging their families and communities deeper into food insecurity and poverty. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerabated the lack of local food production in climate change regions, creating a dire siutuation that requires immediate solutions.
The INMED Aquaponics Social Enterprise is a revolutionary agro-enterprise incubator based on aquaponics--a combination of fish farming and hydroponics that enables farmers to continue farming, despite poor soil conditions. Chemical-free, environmentally friendly and 10X more productive than conventional farming, a single commercial-sized INMED Aquaponics system can yield an average of 10 tons of organic fruits, vegetables and fish annually, which can feed hundreds of people each year.
Within 1 year of implementing INMED Aquaponics, Esther and her all-female farm cooperative increased their revenue 60-fold, winning national awards, creating jobs and providing food security for their impoverished community in drought-stricken Northern Cape, South Africa. For 10+ years, INMED Aquaponics has produced similar results for subsistence farmers and farm co-ops run by people with disabilities across Soth Africa and Jamaica and is now scaling the model in Peru, Brazil and the USA.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
