wHat We Do

Green Source seeks to help millions of smallholders in West and Central Africa produce sustainably-made oil and make a living wage. A majority of smallholders live below the poverty line due to the inaccessibility of machinery. Green Source is a cooperative that 1) supplies locally-made processing machinery for smallholders to use at affordable rates in their communities; 2) offers sustainably certified oil; 3) connects smallholders to a growing number of environmentally and socially-minded buyers.

Green Source is proving this works at our pilot facility which we launched with MIT travel and grant support this past summer in Sypouma, a rural village in Cameroon. We purchased machinery and space, recruited six employees, and have begun to serve hundreds of farmers in the surrounding area. Before our launch, smallholders were forced to either rely on manual production methods, travel for hours with their raw palm fruit to reach a machine to process their oil or sell their fruit cheaply to large producers; in each case they earned marginal incomes. 

Beyond our proof-of-concept facility, our next goal is to regularize our processing system into local factory-built turnkey containers with machinery inside, and then to build-out a network of these containers across greater Central and West Africa to serve millions of smallholders. This model will allow us to transport materials to areas of high demand and eliminate the long-distances smallholders travel to process their fruit.  Increasingly, international buyers are limiting their purchases of palm oil to that which is traceable and certified sustainable, yet the largest suppliers in West and Central Africa provide neither. Green Source offers both through our certified sustainable palm oil and GPS technology that discloses the location of our production sites to buyers.

In an industry that is dominated by large palm oil producers responsible for the clearing of native people’s lands, large-scale deforestation, and exclusionary practices, we offer an alternative: palm oil that is not only fair trade but sustainably made.

KEY fEATURES

• Local palm oil production base for smallholders

• Committed to producing internationally recognized Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certified oil

• Locally-made machines located in smallholders’ backyards cuts production time by 90% & travel time by 80%

bUSINESS mODEL

• Production: Smallholders harvest palm fruits and bring them to our sites

• Processing: Smallholders roast fruits onsite and pay USD4 per 6L barrel of oil produced

• Distribution: We connect Smallholders to buyers seeking to purchase sustainably produced palm oil