The Speakers
James Dalais (SA)
"Vertical Farming within Urban Settings"
About the Speaker:
James Dalais, co-founder of Jacfruit. He grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa where he attended the University of Stellenbosch and graduated with a BA Environmental Development degree. James has started off his professional career in the farming industry by assisting the farmers in the Natal Midlands area, with the economics of international demand. This evolved into a passion for sales for James and coupled with his experience in the heavy industry sector, he was led to the idea of indoor farming. Using all his prior combined skills James is now a leader to a farming solution that Mauritius has needed. His sales skills has brought this fringe product a part of mainstream acceptance. To be able to grow food that could be guaranteed and maintained was something Mauritius could do with, and that is what has led him here today.
About the Topic:
Jacfruit will be conducting its interview on the topic of vertical farming within Urban settings. The indoor vertical farming scene is still relatively new in the farming sector, with a lot of room for development, expansion investment and promotion. There are multiple sub-sectors within the vertical farming sector that are ripe for discussion. The Jacfruit team will try to break it down and explain; what vertical farming entails, the basic setup, costs involved, the foreseen and unforeseen challenges and the enormous benefits, for the individual as well as society at large, in this exciting space.
Denis Madeleine (AU)
Harnessing Humus-The Ultimate Win/Win
About the Speaker:
Denis Madeleine did his studies in Rural Techniques (Agronomy) in Queensland Australia. On his graduation, Denis accepted a position working as a field crop assistant Agronomist in Gatton, followed by a position as a field crop manager of copra and cacao plantations in PNG.
Returning to Australia in 1997 Denis moved out of the rural farming environment, began studying Horticulture, and started his own garden maintenance & landscaping business on Sydney's North Shore, which he successfully ran for twelve years. During this time he became aware of the great amount of pesticides used, so in 2006 Denis decided to take action and explore a natural alternative.
In 2009, Denis sold his horticultural business and completed his first Permaculture Design Course (PDC) with Living Waters Permaculture Foundation. In 2011, he joined Permaculture College Australia where he completed his APT Cert.4.
In 2012 Denis returned to Mauritius where he saw a need for the introduction of Permaculture. For 3 years he taught workshops, consulted, wrote and published articles, built networks & taught organic gardening in schools. In 2015 Denis returned to Australia and started building his permaculture business, Denis Madeleine Permaculture. He completed his Certificate in Nutritional Farming under Graeme Sait (NTS) to further his studies in Sustainable Agriculture. Denis has been sharing his knowledge and experience by working as a permaculture tutor to Cert.3 students within the Byron Community College for 6 months.
About the Topic:
"Humus is the sweet melling, chocolate coloured substance, produced by micro-organisms that serve as their home base and support system. It is also a storage medium for all minerals. Microbes are the bridge between the soil and the plant. There is a microbe behind every mineral. If you can build humus and address mineral requirements in your garden, then you can produce chemical-free, nutrient-dense food with forgotten flavours and enhanced medicinal qualities." www.dmpermaculture.com.au
Rebecca Espitalier-Noel (MUR)
Food Waste Management
About the Speaker:
Rebecca is the co-founder and Managing Director of FoodWise, a social enterprise created in 2018 to save food to empower people and protect our planet. After her studies abroad in the University of St Andrews in Scotland and in Sciences Po in Paris in international development and social business, Rebecca came back to Mauritius at the end of 2018 with an urge to solve the social and environmental issues her country faced. That's when it all began. She and a group of friends were tired of hearing, "food from hotel buffets can't be rescued and have to be thrown away" and made magic happen when they rescued their first meal in 2018. While the initial idea was to focus on food that became waste at the end of buffets, FoodWise discovered that the issue was even bigger with producers, distributors or retailers and they quickly extended their service to these food providers. The rationale behind FoodWise is simple; to connect NGOs helping people in need with businesses whose products would otherwise have gone unsold and been disposed of. Now, after 2 and a half years, its success can be measured in 2.5 million meals being saved, its network of 250 food providers and 120 NGOs and its two other activities, a zero waste juice bar and a consulting service aiming at financing their food redistribution activity.
About the Topic:
We have found a precious resource that is wasted in thousands of tons every year but that if saved, can be used to empower people and protect our planet. Can you guess what it is? Food. As crazy as it sounds, food is the most wasted resource in Mauritius, amounting for 27% of total waste in Mauritius. Want to know how FoodWise turns this problem into a solution? Join us for the AgriFestival on the 11th and 12th of November 2021 to learn how you can also become a magician and actually create value from waste.
Charles Dowding (UK)
1. No Dig Theory - how and why it works
2. Tools and techniques for no dig and making compost by hand.
About the Speaker:
Since 1982 Charles has created and cropped four no dig market gardens on different soils, from stone to silt to clay. In the 1980s he cropped 7.5 acres (3ha) of no dig beds. In the 1990s he farmed in France.
Currently Charles grows vegetables on a third of an acre in Somerset, SW England zone 8. He sells £20,000 of harvests locally, mainly salad leaves, and many vegetables are served on courses at Homeacres.
There are two crops a year from beds which are cheap to establish and quick to maintain. Charles’ methods are easy to understand and work on small areas as well as large ones. No dig scales up and down easily.
He has written ten books and an annual calendar of sowing dates, runs a You Tube channel with 43 million views, writes for national gardening magazines, and gives talks and courses at home and abroad. He has created three online courses, No Dig Gardening Course 1, Growing Success Course 2, From Seed to Harvest Couse 3A and From Seed to Harvest Couse 3B.
About the Topic:
Charles develops and explains time and labour saving methods of gardening, high yielding and nature friendly:
• no dig for less work, strong growth and fewer weeds
• quick ways of growing and picking salad leaves,
• multi-sowing vegetables to grow in clumps
• making and using compost.
Eric Le Vieux (MUR)
New opportunities in Mauritius for sustainable food growth with eco-green credentials
About the Speaker:
Eric Le Vieux, a local entrepreneur with a family background in farming, has previously grown Sugarcane, Tea and Coffee in Zimbabwe. He has also worked in international commodity trading in UK and Holland, (Man Group) as well as Spain and Russia (Tabacalera). Eric is a graduate of Royal Agricultural University, Gloucestershire (UK).
Promoter and CEO of a modern farming Company in Mauritius called Esprit Vert Ltd. Our focus is high quality local produce for local and export markets. Our ethos is to drive the convergence between commercial food production systems, (food security), and food safety, climate adaptation, resource efficiency and sound environmental practices.
About the Topic:
Presentation highlights opportunities for profitable food production systems, that bind five key elements:
(i) conservation of scarce natural resources,
(ii) improve environmental integrity,
(iii) resilience or adaptation to climate change,
(iv) advance gender equality, and
(v) demonstrate sustainable, commercial, innovative and high-quality capacities.
Cedric Fayolle (MUR)
Aquaponics
About the Speaker:
Cedric is an entrepreneur, a pioneer in the online education market in Mauritius. A business consultant and an Aquaponics designer/consultant.
Within his 21 years as a teacher and coach, he has taught over 3000 students. He is driven by empowering emerging and active entrepreneurs through several business courses and programs while contributing to the development of Aquaponics in Mauritius through education and consultation.
About the Topic:
Aquaponics is today known for being a key solution for sustainable farming. Through a natural symbiosis, its fertility levels generate a growth rate of 2.4x faster than any other culture system. It is an automated irrigated system and offers advantages without a match, whether it's for home use or commercial farming.
Discover the amazing science of Aquaponics in this short presentation
About the Workshop:
Discover the advantages of Aquaponics in this 4-hour workshop. This class will teach you the different approaches possible to compose an Aquaponic system and teach you the basics to operate it successfully.
Professor Daya Goburdhun (MUR)
"Reimagining what we produce and what we eat"
About the Speaker:
Assoc Professor Daya Goburdhun has been lecturing and carrying out research in the area of Food Science and Technology for over 30 years at the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Mauritius. Her research interests are in food safety, food waste and postharvest loss management, food composition, healthy eating and future foods. Many of her projects have dealt with food control, food safety and hygiene, food loss and food waste, food composition and food labelling. She is very keen to share her knowledge and interact with the community through short courses, workshops and awareness campaigns.
About the Topic:
Globally and locally, the agricultural and food system is at the threshold of a paradigm shift.
Climate change, dwindling food security, limited natural resources, emerging risks (droughts, floods), pandemics, concern about sustainable development, high percentage of food waste; alarming increases in diet-related diseases and emerging consumer consumption patterns and concern call for a rethinking/reimagining on how and what we produce and what we eat.
In this talk, we share our reflection and gives an insight on what our future foods will look like. The production of these 'future foods' will probably change the way our food systems operate. Examples of these nutritious and sustainable future foods will be insects, algae/seaweeds, mycoprotein, plant based proteins and ingredients (pulses. Future consumer trends focus on more organic, eat local and fresh, superfoods, more fruits and veggies.
Nawsheen Hosenally (MUR)
Agribusiness TV: Changing the narrative through digital storytelling
About the Speaker:
Nawsheen HOSENALLY is a national of the Republic of Mauritius. With a Bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Extension and a Master’s degree in Management and Information Systems. She has over 9 years of experience in digital communications, with a focus on agriculture.
After graduation, Nawsheen joined the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) as ICT4Ag Junior Programme Associate, whereby she worked on supporting the implementation of a youth and ICT programme that covered the African, Caribbean and Pacific regions. Through this experience, she developed a passion for digital communications and pursued her career in this field.
Nawsheen is currently the co-Founder of MEDIAPROD, a communication for development agency based in Burkina Faso. Since 2015, MEDIAPROD has accompanied 45+ development organisations and NGOs in the development and implementation of communication strategies, multimedia content production/dissemination, and training.
Nawsheen is also a Board member of the Dgroups Foundation, a Council member of the African Association for Information and Technologies in Agriculture (AAITA), a 2017 Mandela Washington Fellow and a One Young World Ambassador.
About the Topic:
Over the last decade, the emergence of digital solutions has changed the face of agriculture in Africa. From accessing market prices through mobile apps to spraying agricultural fields with drones, the use and application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are making agriculture smarter and more efficient. But despite these technological advances, agriculture still suffers from an image problem. Youth in Africa are less interested in agricultural jobs because of the negative perception that they have of the sector. To address this challenge, Agribusiness TV was created in 2016 to showcase success stories of youth who have succeeded in agricultural entrepreneurship, with the aim to encourage other youths to be engaged in agriculture from job creation and to contribute to food security. This session will highlight the experience of Agribusiness TV on digital storytelling and how it is contributing to rebrand African agriculture and bring youth back to the sector.
Vyas Ram (MUR)
Organic Agriculture Practices and the Agripreneurs’ Hub
About the Speaker:
An alumnus of the Faculty of Agriculture from the University of Mauritius, Vyas is a fervent supporter of organic agriculture and currently occupies the post of Farm Manager at Farmcity Mauritius, an educational organic farm.
His pledge is to encourage youngsters to engage in the agricultural sector using sustainable methods for Mauritius to achieve self-sufficiency in various varieties of vegetables and fruits.
About the Topic:
Farmcity is proud to be a social enterprise founded on an unwavering commitment to teach, accompany and empower communities to grow their own food. Currently, Farmcity Mauritius offers curated growing kits such as seedlings, growing kits and potting mixes, in addition to educational videos to accompany families to grow from home. Farmcity recently expanded internationally to Singapore, encouraging urban residents to learn how to grow their own food.
One of the major projects launched by Farmcity in 2020 is the Agripreneurs Hub, which acts mainly as an incubator for entrepreneurs engaged in innovative agricultural projects.
For more information, visit: https://www.farmcity.co/community
Nausheen Patel (MUR)
Fruit Flies on Fruits and Vegetables
About the Speaker:
Nausheen works as a Scientific Officer in the Entomology Division of the Ministry of Agro-Industry & Food Security.
She has a Degree in Agriculture and Business Management and a Post Graduate degree in Business Administration (MBA). Nahseen has been working in Agricultural Services for the past 20 years, 10 of which she has devoted to the Entomology Division dealing basically with island-wide surveillance of fruit flies, and other pests of economic importance.
During this time, Nausheen has developed a protocol for the production of local fruit fly bait by modification of waste brewery yeast and worked on updated technologies for fruit fly control, i.e. Sterile Insect Technique.
Currently, she is pursuing a PhD and doing research works related to the suppression of fruit flies of economic importance in Mauritius.
About the Topic:
During this session, Nausheen will be covering some main topics related to the management of Fruit Flies in Agriculture in Mauritius, including the following main topics:
Fruit flies of economic importance in Mauritius
The life cycle of fruit flies
Host plants and Damages caused by fruit flies
Larval and adult surveillance
Fruit Fly Controls:
Use of Pesticides/Biopesticides: Pros and Cons
Biological controls
Male Annihilation Technique (MAT)
Bait Application Technique (BAT)
Sterile Insect Technique