Climate tech company Bio-Logical has raised a $1m seed round to scale up its operations in Kenya, facilitating its mission to build climate-resilient communities of smallholder farmers around the world.
The funding round, led by the Steyn Group and Angel Investors Rob Konterman, Luke Calcott-Stevens and Jochem Wieringa, will go towards the development of Bio-Logical’s first Kenya site producing biochar. It will also pave the way for the company’s expansion throughout the region which will help it support 1 million smallholders and sequester 1 million metric tons of CO2 annually by 2030.
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Smallholder farmers are facing a dire outlook with faltering harvests, increasingly extreme weather and skyrocketing fertilizer prices becoming increasingly common due to climate change. Bio-Logical addresses this challenge through a circular economy, transforming waste into biochar, a super material that sequesters carbo for millennia and regenerates degraded soil. Their biochar is then incorporated into an organic fertilizer which is distributed to smallholder farmers in the region, regenerating land, increasing crop drought resistance, and boosting yields by over 50%.
“Bio-Logical was founded on the belief that Smallholder farmers should not suffer at the hands of a climate crisis they have played no part in. At present, soil degradation and changing weather patterns due to climate change are directly threatening the livelihoods of 500 million smallholder farmers around the world,” said Rory Buckworth, Co-Founder.
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Utilizing its innovative technology, Bio-Logical’s first site will be the largest biochar production facility in Africa. It will transform over 30,000 tonnes of agricultural waste a year into biochar, sequestering 25,000 metric tons of CO2. This process will generate carbon credits, the revenue from which wil be used to subsidize its resilience-building fertilizer for smallholder farmers, boosting yields and reducing fertilizer costs.
“We believe carbon credits should do more than simply remove carbon from the atmosphere and instead should be used to build the resilience of climate vulnerable communities,” added Philip Hunter, Co-Founder.