Our latest episode is with Joanne Muchai Murunga, the Chief Operating Officer at Kentaste, a leading producer of coconut products in Kenya. Kentaste supports economic development by connecting rural farmers to an international supply chain. Moreover, Kentaste has a focus on women’s empowerment, with women representing over 50% of their senior management. Kentaste is a recent awardee through the USAID Feed the Future Food Loss and Waste Partnership Facility. The FLWPartnership Facility provides catalytic co-investment to MSMEs in LMICs to scale innovations that reduce FLW with a focus on nutritious value chains. In this episode, Joanne and I discuss how the coconut value chain has been impacted by climate change, how Kentaste is working to reduce FLW, and how Kentaste is empowering women and improving the capacity of smallholder farmers.
Over one-third of the world’s food is lost or wasted, undermining efforts to end hunger and malnutrition while contributing 8 to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. In low- and middle-income countries, over 40 percent of food loss occurs before a crop even makes it to market, whether due to inadequate storage, pests or microbes, spoilage, spillage in transport or otherwise. Eliminating food loss and waste (FLW) would provide enough food to feed two billion people, as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Addressing FLW is critical to global food security, nutrition and climate change mitigation, with the private sector engagement and women’s empowerment playing an important role in these efforts.
In order to raise awareness, exchange information and share success stories, USAID’s Food Loss and Waste Community of Practice created the USAID Kitchen Sink Food Loss and Waste Podcast. Our goal is to share monthly, bite-sized episodes that highlight the approaches USAID and the U.S. government are taking to address FLW. We hope these episodes provide a valuable resource for those interested in why we should care about FLW and how we can reduce it.
You can subscribe to receive the latest episodes of USAID’s Kitchen Sink and listen to our episodes on the platform of your choice: Apple, Spotify, and more! Video recordings of the episodes are available on YouTube. Check in every month for new episodes as global experts discuss a range of issues about FLW and methane emissions - from the critical role of youth to the staggering economic costs - and learn about specific ways that USAID is tackling FLW around the world.
If you have an idea for an episode topic you’d like to see featured or if you would like to participate in an episode of USAID’s Kitchen Sink, please reach out to Nika Larian (nlarian@usaid.gov).
There’s no time to waste!
Our latest episode is with Joanne Muchai Murunga, the Chief Operating Officer at Kentaste, a leading producer of coconut products in Kenya. Kentaste supports economic development by connecting rural farmers to an international supply chain. Moreover, Kentaste has a focus on women’s empowerment, with women representing over 50% of their senior management. Kentaste is a recent awardee through the USAID Feed the Future Food Loss and Waste Partnership Facility. The FLWPartnership Facility provides catalytic co-investment to MSMEs in LMICs to scale innovations that reduce FLW with a focus on nutritious value chains. In this episode, Joanne and I discuss how the coconut value chain has been impacted by climate change, how Kentaste is working to reduce FLW, and how Kentaste is empowering women and improving the capacity of smallholder farmers.
Over one-third of the world’s food is lost or wasted, undermining efforts to end hunger and malnutrition while contributing 8 to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. In low- and middle-income countries, over 40 percent of food loss occurs before a crop even makes it to market, whether due to inadequate storage, pests or microbes, spoilage, spillage in transport or otherwise. Eliminating food loss and waste (FLW) would provide enough food to feed two billion people, as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Addressing FLW is critical to global food security, nutrition and climate change mitigation, with the private sector engagement and women’s empowerment playing an important role in these efforts.
In order to raise awareness, exchange information and share success stories, USAID’s Food Loss and Waste Community of Practice created the USAID Kitchen Sink Food Loss and Waste Podcast. Our goal is to share monthly, bite-sized episodes that highlight the approaches USAID and the U.S. government are taking to address FLW. We hope these episodes provide a valuable resource for those interested in why we should care about FLW and how we can reduce it.
You can subscribe to receive the latest episodes of USAID’s Kitchen Sink and listen to our episodes on the platform of your choice: Apple, Spotify, and more! Video recordings of the episodes are available on YouTube. Check in every month for new episodes as global experts discuss a range of issues about FLW and methane emissions - from the critical role of youth to the staggering economic costs - and learn about specific ways that USAID is tackling FLW around the world.
If you have an idea for an episode topic you’d like to see featured or if you would like to participate in an episode of USAID’s Kitchen Sink, please reach out to Nika Larian (nlarian@usaid.gov).
There’s no time to waste!
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(Speaker 1:Nika Larian) Welcome to USAID's Kitchen Sink a food loss and waste podcast. I'm your producer, Nika Lian. 30 to 40% of the food that is produced is either lost or wasted, contributing to a global food crisis with over 800 million going to bed hungry. Listen on as USAID experts speak with researchers and development professionals to explore solutions to this critical issue that demands a kitchen sink approach. When it comes to climate food security and food system sustainability, we have no time to waste. Nika Larian) Thank you for tuning in to USAID's "Kitchen Sink," a food loss and waste podcast. My name is Nika Larian, food loss and waste advisor and producer of the "Kitchen Sink." Today, I will be speaking with Joanne Muchai Murunga, chief operating officer at Kentaste, a recent awardee through the USAID Market Systems and Partnership activity, food loss and waste partnership facility. Together, we will discuss the impact of climate change on coconut production in Kenya, the work Kentaste is doing to reduce food loss and waste and empower women, and the partnership with USAID. Welcome, Joanne. Please introduce yourself.
(Speaker 2:Joanne Muchai Murunga) Thank you so much. My name is Joanne Muchai Murunga, and like you mentioned, I work at Kentaste as the COO. I'm by trade at sales and marketing professional. Actually, fun fact, I am a chef by profession, or that's what I studied initially, and then I kind of transitioned into business and then into manufacturing and agri processing. Really excited to be here and talk a little bit about food loss waste and what we're doing about it.- Well, thank you Joanne for sharing a little bit of your background. I did not know that you have training as a chef, so you have definitely an interesting perspective when it comes to food loss and waste. So I'm looking forward to exploring that with you further. Let's start, Kentaste. Can you provide some background on Kentaste and how you are working to reduce food loss and waste in your operations?- Sure. So Kentaste is a manufacturing company and we produce coconut products. We work in the south coast of Kenya, which is in East Africa, and we work across the Kenyan coast with about 5,000 smallholder farmers. We source the coconuts from them. We have five collection centers in those regions, and then we bring the coconuts to our factory where we make all these, you know, nice, amazing products. And we distribute those products in Kenya across about a thousand retail stores, and then also regionally and internationally, both in retail and in bulk. And Kentaste has been really doing this scale or level of production the last three years, but we really did start the journey in 2014, just building up the value chain and beginning to work with farmers in a value chain that has often been neglected. The coconut value chain in Kenya is very disorganized. It is not structured. It's relatively young when you compare it to maybe the tea sector or the coffee sector. And Kentaste has really been at the forefront of leading the growth in this sector and we're really, really proud of the work that we're doing. So in particular with food loss waste, like I've mentioned, the coconut value chain is still very young. We do have, in Kenya, some reports say a capacity or a production capacity of 300 million coconuts annually. So if you think about it, without Kentaste or without any large processor, if it was anybody else, these coconuts would mostly be going to waste. The coconuts that are produced at the moment far surpass any other usage, let's say going to traditional, or in formal markets, or even home use. And so developing the industry and bringing in large format producers like ourselves is really reducing the food loss waste in the coconut sector. So that's one of the ways. And then we're, you know, coming up with ways of using different parts of the coconut, if it's the shells, if it's a kernel, if it's the water, just transforming all of that into different products. And then also now looking into possibly going into other value chains. We'll see if we'll do that, but yes, that has been the main impact that we've had in terms of food loss and waste in our sector.- That's really great that Kentaste is being so innovative and thoughtful in using all parts of the coconut. Can you talk about this work that you'll be doing with USAID and how that will expand Kentaste work to reduce food loss and waste? And could you also speak more broadly to how USAID, other donors and the government can help private sector actors facilitate change to reduce food loss and waste?- Sure. So with USAID, we've really partnered to do three main things, and the first of those is to expand our production capacity, especially with regard to two products. The first is coconut chips and the second is coconut water. So these are products that we haven't been producing or rather we're very, very young or in the very early stages of these products, but it's products that we believe, one, have a food loss and waste impact, we do reduce that. For example, the coconut water, we have not been processing that all the years that we've been processing. So on average we've been, you know, pouring out 3,000 liters of coconut water a day and this is revenue, you know, going out into the drains. But more than that, it has environmental impact and, of course, it is food loss waste. So we're going to convert that coconut water into a yummy beverage. We're going to get it onto shelves in Kenya, in the U.S., in other markets. And that's going to have a huge impact not only to us, but our bottom line revenues, and also to our farmers as a result of that. With the coconut chips, again, another product we're really excited about, an innovative product for us. We haven't done this before entering into a snack line or a snack product. Most of our other products are commoditized, you know, the coconut oil or desiccated coconuts. So this is where we can be kind of young and energetic with the brand and figure that out. But again, in terms of food loss waste, it just means that we can open up a new production line and make a product that we weren't producing before and utilize more coconuts and buy more coconuts from our farmers. With that, then obviously, we'll need to expand our markets, which is another great USAID initiative or something that we're partnering with USAID for. And particular to expanding our presence in the U.S. market, you know, the U.S. for a product like this is by far a bigger market than Kenya or other markets regionally. So if we just get into the market, get a foothold with one in two, three retail stores, that would have a huge impact on us. And again, this all translates just down to us being able to buy and process more coconuts, and also, you know, impact the farmers a lot more. And the last one is in terms of job creation and employment. All of this will ultimately lead to us needing to employ more people, more youth, more women, and yeah, hopefully just make an impact in the communities that we work in. When I look at it more broadly, that's actually a great question. So at Kentaste, we have some great impact investors who have come in and supported us over the years, but I think what we've noticed in terms of food loss waste is there needs to be patient investment in terms of allowing companies to create a little bit slower to invest in R&D to try new products. And that's one of the things that partnering with USAID has allowed us to now do is to use the funds, which is a grant, to use the funds now to experiment, to get the products right, to get the marketing aspect right, to get everything right so that we're able to take it to market. I think often when you look at funding or other partners who have maybe interest act on loans or have very punitive time limits on loans on things or investments, that makes it a lot harder, especially for SMEs to get that process right. So I think that's the one thing that I would say to other donors, government, private sector, is a lot more patient capital is required in the sectors, especially with SMEs in developing countries as well, yep.- That's a really great point, Joanne, and I am excited to be a part of the MSP food loss and waste partnership facility. So I'm very excited to see what Kentaste does with the partnership. As one of our first formalized agreements, really excited to see the work that we're going to do together to like, as you said, increase production of this new product, this coconut water. I do have a question. I know you we're talking about how Kentaste is really thinking of how to use all parts of the coconut. Can you speak to how you're using the shells and perhaps plan to use the husks in the future as well?- Yeah, absolutely. So with the shells, at the moment, when we de-shell or take off the shell of coconut, we use that currently to power our dryers. So it becomes a source of energy to, you know, fire up the dryers. But one of the things that we're looking at in future is transforming that into some sort of, either charcoal or condensed energy. So I guess it's charcoal. We find that it helps a lot more with the burning efficiency. The energy is much, much better if we're using that, instead of, let's say firewood or other forms of energy. So that's one thing that we're looking at, and with the coconut husks as well. So traditionally, in Kenyan, in the region where we are, a lot of the households around us come and collect the husks and use that as energy in their homes, you know, to light up their cook stoves when they're, you know, cooking and doing other things within the household. So we want to, again, try and make that a little bit more efficient, transforming the husks into a more efficient source of energy, whether it's us or partnering with somebody else who can do that. And then another project we're also looking at is biochar. There's a, you know, a craze, a recent, I don't know how recent it is, but there's definitely a buzzword that is biochar now and how it helps to retain moisture and nutrients for plants. And we've actually run a couple of trials. I think the disadvantages when we run the trials, it was during the worst droughts that Kenya has seen in the last 40 years. So there was a lot of distorted results coming out of that. But we want to kind of run the trials again, see what distributing biochar to our farmers can do for the coconut tree production. If we're able to move production from, you know, 20 to 30 coconuts per tree on average to 80 to 100 coconuts per tree on average, again, huge impact to farmers, their impact. Huge impact for us as well because we can get coconuts much easier than we're getting them now and all round it's going to be good impact if we can get that project off the ground.- Yeah, definitely a lot of buzzwords that are growing in popularity and interest: biochar, circular economy approaches, zero waste companies. So it seems like Kentaste is really on the cutting-edge when it comes to thinking about sustainability and reducing food loss and waste. As a part of this partnership with USAID and increasing production of these new products and scaling, you mentioned increasing employment. So can you speak to any training or extension services Kentaste is providing? And can you speak to how you're working with farmers?- Yeah, absolutely. So another great part of the partnership that we have with USAID, actually, there's a couple of elements here, and the first is increasing our farmer base. So like I mentioned, we're working with just about 5,000 farmers now and we're targeting to have 6,000 farmers by the end of next year. So registering a lot more farmers into our database, which means that we have to increase our field team. At the moment, we have a field team of about 30 people. They're constantly in the field, registering farmers, working with them, training them, doing inspections and audits on our Organic and Fair for Life certifications, and then, of course, purchasing coconuts from them. And once we move, you know, as we increase the farmers, we'll definitely have to increase the team size just to make sure that we efficiently serve all of our farmers. So that's definitely one of the things that we're going to do. We're also going to, as part of the program, incorporate a lot of climate resilience training. So like I mentioned, the last two years have been really, really tough in Kenya in terms of the environment. We, again, we went through the worst drought in the last 40 years and it was a pretty prolonged period as well. And we're just coming out of that. We are thankful that we've received adequate amounts of rains that will kind of help the coconut trees revive. But it was a lesson to a lot of us in different sectors, but especially in the coconut sector because coconut trees are supposed to be quite drought-resilient, but they did take quite a hit during the last two years. So we're going to incorporate a lot of training to make sure that, you know, once the drought comes around in the next three, four, five years, because it is a cycle, that our farmers are more prepared. They're mulching, they're composting, they're preparing the trees, and when it comes around, the trees are stronger. So that's one element that we're going to put in. I think another cool element is that we are, as part of training and increasing the team's ability, the team that is coming in to do the coconut water or the coconut chips, that's going to be an entirely new team. And again, as part of USAID's mission to empower women, we're going to make at least 50% of those new jobs are for women, which is really, really cool. And of course, we're going to train all of the people who come in. So it's going to be a lot training, a lot of training around the technology, which is, again, very cool. It's the pioneer in the region, the first time anyone is doing this kind of thing with coconut. So we're really excited to do that as well.- So I'm really glad that you brought up the work that you're going to be doing to empower women. That's definitely an objective priority at USAID. Can you speak to some of the work that you'll be doing in that space, whether that's providing training or increasing employment for women? Yeah, sure, I can speak about that. So we're actually doing this in two different ways. So on the farmer side, we are empowering all of our women to register themselves as farmers. So traditionally, coconuts are a male crop, which means that most of the activities around coconuts on the farm are done by men. This is because although coconuts require very little care, the harvesting is very labor-intensive. The moving of the coconuts around the farm or aggregating the coconuts is also quite labor-intensive. So the men tend to do it, and as a result, they tend to register themselves as the farm owner. And what we want to do is we want to empower the women who are the actual landowners, in many cases, to register themselves because, ultimately, they're the ones who should decide what happens with the money from the farms that they own. So this includes training around, you know, gender inclusion, around decision-making as a family, around different aspects of what they can contribute, and that just to de-stigmatize them registering themselves as a farm owner. So that's one of the things that we're looking to do. And the goal is to have 35% women registered farmers by the end of next year. So hopefully, that will be just a lot more encouraging to the women in this region. And then the second thing is around our employees. Again, like I mentioned, we're planning to have at least 15 new employees in the new production lines and 50% of these being women. In Kenya, women in manufacturing is, as you can imagine, probably more rare than in western settings. But because we want to have a focus on empowering women in these communities, we are going to give them the training that they need. The lines that we're bringing in are highly automated, so that also allows them to engage more with the machinery and get into the production line. We currently have 30% women on staff, but a lot of them are on the administration side just because, again, it's a very labor-intensive process in terms of our processing. But these two lines will be very automated and will allow them to participate more in production, which I think is pretty cool for women to get into such departments. So really looking forward to that, and yeah, hopefully, we'll be able to see a lot more women participating in the coconut value chain.- That's excellent. I think that's one of the most exciting things about working in the food loss and waste space, but also more particularly with the MSP food loss and waste partnership facility is there's so much opportunity for innovation and job creation, empowering women and youth. And at USAID, we also talk about the triple winds of reducing food loss and waste. So the impacts that it can have to improve nutrition and food security, increase economic development and, of course, mitigate climate change. So that is where I want to end our conversation today. I know you spoke earlier about the trainings that you're providing on climate resilience and you mentioned that you've had one of the worst droughts in Kenya. So can you speak a little further to how climate change has impacted the coconut value chain?- Absolutely, yeah. So maybe I can just go through a little bit of history with Kentaste. So between 2014 to 2019-2020, it was, I don't want to say a passive, but it was a very small business. We were producing for the local market. We were making two or three products, didn't require too much production capacity. With the recent investment from investors, we decided to increase our production capacity. You know, we tripled our capacity between the years of 2019 to 2021. With a triple capacity, that means that we needed a lot more coconuts. So we went from sourcing, you know, 4 million coconuts in 2020 to sourcing 10 million coconuts in 2021. And we were on a good growth trajectory. We had the customers, we had quality, we had the production, and what we were looking for is more growth now in the business and we began to plan and focus for that. But end of 2021 came the drought and the coconut numbers really, really begun to reduce. And we saw, you know, it just depends on the region where you're in, but we saw impact as bad as, you know, 60% reduction in production capacity of coconut trees in some regions, and in some regions it was 5%. So when you average it out, we estimate that our farmers lost about 30% production capacity of their coconuts. And then we also saw the death of coconut trees. So not only were the coconut trees producing less, we actually lost a significant number of coconut trees as well. So coming out of that, you know, 2022-2023, we've had a difficult time sourcing. We've gone back to the 4 million mark, whereas we should be growing towards the 30 million mark, where we want to be, but it's not an insurmountable task, right? The coconuts are coming back. The rain, again, we're just thankful for the rain. The coconut trees are growing, but the biggest impact I think has just been the farmers realizing the contribution coconuts has to their income. Because once we had this period where our farmers don't have coconuts, and that is their main source of income, it did really affect our farmers. So they're coming back and they're really, really asking for, you know, seedlings. So that's one of the projects that we're looking to run. We're establishing our own seedling nursery so that we can hand out seedlings. We've done this previously. Again, pre 2021, we handed out about 100,000 seedlings to our farmers. And we do this on a cost share basis. They pay for 50% of the seedling and we take 50%. And we want to get back to doing that, but we want to now formalize it and grow it a lot more. So we're looking to hand out a million seedling in the next five years. And it's a little bit of an ambitious project for a small company to be doing, you know, without the assistance of government or, you know, other public sector, but with the support of private partners, with our investors, with partners like USAID, we're really excited to get that going and get seedlings to our farmers, help them establish them, grow them, and help them get a lot of the economic capacity or capability that they lost back. So yeah, that's one of the things that we're looking to do. I think another thing is, still going back into the training and extension services, just preparing our farmers a lot more for what the impacts of drought, especially on, like I said, their livelihoods and income. Just making sure that when it comes around next time, that they're prepared to have stronger trees and have coconuts even during those tough times.- Well, I really applaud the ambitious work that Kentaste is doing in this space. I think, obviously, the relationship between climate and food systems is bi-directional and very intricately linked. And I think a lot of people understand that our food systems and agriculture can have an impact on climate, but I think this case study really demonstrates that climate is having a huge impact on our food systems and agricultural production and also food loss and waste I think really sits at the center of that conversation. So I really appreciate that case study and that example. I think it really captures not only that relationship between climate and food systems, but what some of our private sector actors can do in that space to help address that relationship and adapt to climate change and reduce food loss and waste. So really applaud the work that Kentaste is doing. It seems like you are really thinking about this from a lot of different directions. And so I really applaud the work that you're doing and look forward to all that we're able to accomplish together in the USAID food loss and waste partnership facility. So thank you so much, Joanne, for taking the time to chat with us today. It was really great to learn more about the work Kentaste is doing.- Thank you, thank you for having me, and thank you for being a great partner and we're also looking forward to seeing what we accomplish together. Thank you for tuning in to USAID's Kitchen Sink. This podcast was produced by Nika Larian and is organized by the USAID Food Loss and Waste Community of practice co-chairs Ahmed Kablan and Ann Vaughn. Additional thanks goes to Feed the Future, the US Government's Global Food Security Initiative and the USAID Center for Nutrition.(music playing)