One solution to meet the needs of farmers, cooling companies and consumers

Nearly 40% of food produced globally is lost before reaching the consumers. In low and middle-income countries, this loss results from inadequate crop handling and lack of refrigerated storage. Your VCCA tackles this issue by easing access to affordable cold storage solutions. Improved fruit and vegetable quality significantly enhances regional food and nutritional security.

Most cooling companies rely on manual registers to manage operations at cold rooms. This approach is susceptible to errors and lacks transparency for cooling users. Digitalisation allows cooling units to be operated more efficiently, enables remote monitoring of their real-time conditions and finances, and provides farmers with personalised advice for making informed sales decisions.

Your VCCA's digital impact measurement tools empower cooling companies to evaluate pricing, payback periods, and cold room performance, enhancing their appeal to investors. By establishing a Community of Practice, Your VCCA is also driving a shift towards sustainable financing, fostering knowledge sharing, and aligning with the investment priorities of financial institutions and impact investors.

All cold rooms supported by Your VCCA operate on a Cooling-as-a-Service model. Cooling users pay a small fee per crate per day to use cold rooms owned, maintained, and repaired by local cooling companies. These companies may also involve the local community or farmer-producer organisations in managing the cold rooms.

Your VCCA's unique mobile app, Coldtivate, streamlines cold room management with data-driven tools. Cooling companies can use Coldtivate to digitally manage inventory and remotely monitor cold room conditions and finances. Cooling users can use the app to track the remaining storage life of their produce and access open-source market price data, empowering them to maximise their earnings.

Your VCCA partners with local communities to promote passive and active crop cooling, offering farmers and small-scale vendors alternatives to open storage and distress selling. Training covers optimal use of multi-commodity cold rooms and best practices in post-harvest management, using comics and videos in local languages. All capacity-bridging efforts prioritise integrating women into the post-harvest phase, where they are often underrepresented.

Your VCCA will soon assist cold room users with market linkage. The uncertainty about being able to sell their well-stored crops often deters farmers from using cold rooms. To overcome this hurdle, Your VCCA will soon feature a consumer interface that allows independent consumers and bulk buyers to check for nearby cold rooms, view available crops and their remaining shelf life, place orders for aggregated crops from different farmers, and track crop quality using hygrothermal sensors in the cold rooms. The goal of market linkage is to bring fresher fruits and vegetables to the market while ensuring that farmers receive fair prices.

With servitisation, farmers and traders can access top-tier cold rooms at low rates without having to bear the upfront costs. This helps preserve produce quality, extend shelf life, and secure higher off-season prices.

By using Coldtivate, cooling companies can optimise operations, manage finances, and assess their impact across various cold rooms using a standardised approach. These factors are crucial for demonstrating business viability and attracting additional funding to expand operations.

In food-insecure populations, a significant portion of calories comes from energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods like refined grains, sugary treats, and high-fat items. Your VCCA empowers consumers to purchase fresh, nutrient-dense, and healthier high-quality food directly from farmers at cold rooms, all at affordable prices.

Your VCCA collaborates with cooling companies to engage the local community, including farmer-producer organisations, women's self-help groups, and youth groups, in cold room management. This community-centred approach fosters a sense of ownership, enhances the ease of using cold rooms, and facilitates skills transfer.

Your VCCA's work aligns with and supports local governments' efforts in low and middle-income countries to help the agricultural sector adapt to climate change, secure and improve farmer livelihoods, and implement Cooling Action Plans.

By supporting solar-powered cold rooms, facilitating investments in sustainable cold room upgrades, reducing post-harvest losses, and promoting eco-friendly refrigerants, Your VCCA is contributing to the global goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C.