NUvention Innovate for Impact

HOW MIGHT WE HELP FARMERS CAPTURE THE VALUE OF EXISTING ASSETS ON THEIR FARMS?

WINTER AND SPRING 2014

While visiting coffee farms in rural Nicaragua, we learned that excellent coffee is grown in the shade of fruit trees, in order to maintain moderate growth temperatures. For this reason, coffee farmers plant their crops under the countless banana trees that dot the landscape. Due to the abundance of the tree and the fruit it produces, supply outweighs demand for bananas in these communities, and farmers cannot capture this potential profit from their land.

Skills applied

Design research
Synthesis and brainstorming
Service prototyping
Design and business strategy

Our social startup venture, Fallen Fruit, was designed to help coffee farmers diversify their revenue streams and capture the full potential of their natural resources. Fallen Fruit would work with local coffee cooperativas to aggregate and purchase bananas, from which we would produce high quality, organic dried fruit, and sell the product into international markets, like the United States and Mexico.

We partnered with Fabretto, Mayorga Coffee, and the Cinco de Junio Cooperativa in northwest Nicaragua. Read more about our project and trip at our Tumblr page.

Click to watch the video of our final pitch.