My belief in “Wealth from waste, greener growth for all” stems from my father’s background in the agricultural sector. He is an entrepreneur in agricultural logistics with more than 20 years of business experience. His services are predominantly for post-harvest produces from farmers in Cameron Highlands in Malaysia to surrounding urbanites. Through him, I gradually become more aware and empathise with the hardships of agricultural farmers and workers. I saw the amount of postharvest losses and the subsequent losses of income that these people consistently face. These people tend to be in the B40 group. In Malaysia, the B40 group is defined as the Bottom 40% income groups with monthly household income of no more than USD$ 1000. The average household size in Malaysia is about 4.1, so this would translate to no more than USD$200 per capita per month of income. I therefore grow to become more passionate about using science and technology to find an innovative solution that can add or extract value from these postharvest losses to generate extra income for the agricultural B40 group.
However, I gradually realise that being more knowledgeable does not necessary bring change. Leadership skill is a pre-requisite in any change-maker. While I had prior 3-year experience being Head of Leaders at Youth Leader Association, I still pondered about the impact pathway of further developing my leadership skills with that of my belief in “Wealth from waste, greener growth for all”. Initially, I thought that I might be a bit too young for older people to take me seriously. All that changed for me with the headline making 17-year old Greta Thunberg who is afflicted with Asperger syndrome, yet able to create intense discussion across cultural, social, and geographical boundaries and divides. She inspired me to overcome my self-doubt and be proactive in addressing the lack of youth leadership in achieving UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in my country. UN SDGs are not widely taught and practised in universities, community development, policy-making and businesses in Malaysia. As I want my country to be a better place for all, starting with my generation, I begin to look for internship opportunities that has SDG role model as my mentor.
I chose to delve into chemical engineering study in order to find practical technological solutions to these economic, environmental, and social problems of these postharvest losses. My knowledge in chemical engineering secured me an internship at Agridon Technologies and TripleVs Venture. I first came to know about them via a senior of mine and then through some background research, I found their names on IChemE Malaysia Awards due to their UN SDG innovation. I was privileged to be able to gain practical technical and commercial experience that is relevant to my belief in “Wealth from waste, greener growth for all”. I received a ‘Eureka’ moment during the internship as I gained more knowledge that these post-harvest losses can be converted to commercially valuable animal feed. The link is an intermediate bio-conversion process in the form of insect protein. This has the potential to double per-hectare revenue generation. However, I experienced another significant roadblock to my impact plan. I was confounded by the large capital investment required for this bio-conversion process and value chain. This could potentially be barrier-to-entry for agricultural B40, primarily due to lack of finances on their part to own the solution. Under the guidance of my internship supervisor and with additional inputs from his client, we began to research on business-model innovation and thereafter, we found that ‘hub-and-spoke’ model is the most suitable solution. Basically, his client would be the ‘hub’ which is a highly capitalised capital owner, while the ‘spokes’ would be the credit-tight agricultural B40 groups who will be larvae growers, with relatively favourable short turnover time. Contract farming agreement (CFA) would be the guideline to facilitate ‘hub-and-spoke’ model. I am so glad that legacy of my work in Agridon Technologies and TripleVs Venture is going to be part of their innovation and commercialisation strategy to value add to agricultural communities. I am already considering the next appropriate steps upon my graduation so that my belief would become a global and commercially proven ideal.