Green Inspiration is a series of articles developed by Local.mx to showcase the most relevant environmental projects. In collaboration with Rolex's Perpetual Planet initiative, our goal is to raise awareness, inspire new generations and encourage all good ideas that improve life on Mother Earth. Rolex is supporting inspiring organizations and individuals on a mission to make the planet perpetual. #PerpetualPlanet. For more information visit rolex.org.
"The goal of my project," says U.S. social entrepreneur Felix Brooks-church, a Rolex Award Laureate for 2021 Initiative in the field of Science and Health, "is to end malnutrition by ensuring that all meals consumed by mothers and their children contain essential nutrients."
Brooks-church talks about his project with such confidence and enthusiasm that he seems to be tackling an easily solvable problem, yet it is his perfectly pragmatic approach - the invention of a machine that now benefits two million people every day - that allows him to promise to end one of humanity's most important ailments. Micronutrient deficiency (or "hidden hunger") affects around 2 billion people worldwide and is responsible for 15,000 infant deaths every day, cases of early blindness, weakened immune systems, low birth weight, among many other consequences that could have been prevented with proper nutrition. The African continent is, of course, the epicenter of this global problem.
Felix Brooks-church, along with his social enterprise, Sanku, has been working in Tanzania since 2013 to bring his dosing machine to every small maize flour mill, the basis of the diet in much of the territory and other East African countries. This machine - small, light and compatible by design with existing equipment in any rural mill - adds the necessary dose of vitamin B12, zinc, folic acid and iron, and turns a normal flour into a fortified food, within reach of all people in the most remote communities, where there is no access to a wider variety of foods and where food fortification programs do not reach. The work does not end with the installation, as the machines are monitored remotely to ensure that they are in operation.
The business model is also ingenious: Sanku buys the flours in bulk at low cost and sells them to the mills at market price. The resulting margin is enough to pay for the nutrient mix, which has a surprisingly low cost: less than a dollar per person each year. In addition to Tanzania, the machine has reached four countries in the region under this scheme: Mozambique, Malawi, Rwanda and Kenya.
Making our planet a better place seems, at present, a Herculean task. But perhaps it's not about solving all the problems at once. If we have learned anything from each installment, as we learn about the projects of the Rolex Award Laureates, it is that changing the world depends on simple, well-implemented and scalable ideas that can reach every corner of the Earth. But, above all, they must be projects that focus on urgent problems, whose solution brings about important, immediate and concrete changes. Felix Brooks-church affirms that nutrition is a basic human right and is focused on taking the dosing machine to a different country each year, a goal that becomes more tangible thanks to the support of Rolex. In 2021 alone, he plans to install 180 machines. At this rate, by 2025, his project will be able to benefit 25 million people every day.
Flour that does good
As in many regions of the world, corn is the basis of the Mexican diet. Although in our country we have policies focused on fortifying basic foods, such as flour or salt, large-scale production tends to affect quality and damage the entire agricultural ecosystem. That is why it is more important than ever to consume products that, from their conception, take care of everyone involved in the process: from the farmer to the final consumer.
Maizajo, a mill located in the Azcapotzalco district, is one of these projects: they are concerned with the recovery of native corn, which they acquire directly from producing families in areas near Mexico City and whose practices are agroecological. They bring them from the State of Mexico, Morelos, Hidalgo, Tlaxcala and Querétaro, and are beginning their collaboration with Arca Tierra, in Xochimilco, with which they also try to keep their carbon footprint to a minimum. Their nixtamalization process is done in the traditional way, with quicklime, which adds calcium and helps the corn's digestibility.
The result is a much richer flour (in nutrients, but also in flavor) and tortillas that do well. Since they recover some rare corn, such as Tlaxcalan pink corn, you can also find tortillas, tlacoyos and colorful sopes, which are delivered weekly. Through Maizajo, Daniela Moreno and Santiago Muñoz offer a real and affordable alternative to everyday corn products, and their project has the potential to change the vices of the food system one tortilla at a time. And this seems to go hand in hand with the words of Felix Brooks-church, the Rolex Laureate entrepreneur: "What we do is not just adding nutrients to food. What we also do is ensure a basic human right to have good nutrition. The same for shelter, security and water. There are many injustices in the world, and this is the role I get to play, to compensate."
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Green Inspiration is a series of articles that fills us with excitement. Throughout the year, we will showcase the most relevant environmental projects that have been carried out around the globe under Rolex's Perpetual Planet initiative, and we will also tell the local stories of those facing enormous environmental challenges.
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