Harvest Hubs
Food production, cold storage, power, water, and training in one place, run by the community it feeds.
Growers with a morning's harvest, South AfricaThe Desmond Tutu Programme to End Global Hunger
Hunger is rarely one bad day.
A season turns dry and the field gives up. A road floods and the trucks stop coming. The market two towns over has tomatoes; you have bus fare or you don't. Aid trucks help, until they leave.
The conditions that make food hard to grow are spreading: unreliable rain, worn-out land, unstable power, heat, and a harvest that spoils before it reaches a market. Farmers face them on every continent.
- $3.26 trillion
in crops and livestock lost to disasters since 1991
Source 1 - 645 million
people faced hunger in 2025, about 7.8 percent of the world
Source 2 - 2.7 billion
people cannot afford a healthy diet
Source 2 - 181 million
children under five live in severe food poverty, about 1 in 4
Source 3 - 1 in 3
of the world's food is lost or wasted before anyone eats it
Source 4
Growing the food is half the job.
Around the world, a large share of what farmers grow is lost between field and plate. In sub-Saharan Africa, where the first hubs are going up, perishable food travels roughly 4,000 kilometers and 23 days to reach a buyer. Up to 40 percent spoils before anyone eats it. (5)
Food lost for lack of cold storage alone could feed an estimated one billion people. (4)
A cold room and a dryer change that math. The harvest keeps. The farmer gets time, and options, and a price.
people could be fed on the food lost to a missing cold chain.
One site. Everything a community needs to feed itself.
A Harvest Hub is three solar-powered greenhouses with cold storage, clean water, internet, and a trained local team, built as one unit. It grows food year round where rain, land, and power can no longer be counted on, and keeps the harvest from spoiling before it reaches a buyer. FreshMinistries developed the model, OneWorld Fresh builds it, and the community that receives it runs it.
Three greenhouses
Standardized aquaponics systems running Optiponics, growing year round.
Solar microgrid
Reliable off-grid power with battery storage, with surplus reaching the community.
Cold storage
Refrigeration that keeps the harvest from spoiling.
Dehydration
Drying systems that turn surplus into shelf-stable food.
Water
A borehole, storage, and treatment, with rainwater capture where it helps.
Connectivity
Satellite internet for monitoring, training, and market information.
Training
Six weeks, three phases, at least two local operators per hub.
The hub serves more than the people who work in it. Farmers nearby use the cold room and the dryers. Power, water, and internet reach the households around it.
Fish feed the plants. Plants clean the water.
A fish tank and a garden, plumbed together. Fish waste becomes plant food. The plants clean the water and send it back. Solar runs the pumps. Sensors watch nutrients, temperature, and water quality, and a satellite link lets our technical team help an operator anywhere on earth. We call the system Optiponics.
1. The fish tank
Fish live here. Their waste leaves the tank in the water.
2. The solids filter
Solid waste is caught and taken out before the water moves on.
3. The biofilter
Bacteria turn what is left in the water into plant food.
4. The grow towers
Water runs down the towers. Plants take up the nutrients and clean it as they grow.
5. Back to the tank
A pump returns the clean water to the fish. Solar runs the pump, and sensors watch the water the whole way round.
- Up to 90%
less water than growing in soil, in a sector that already uses 70 percent of the world's freshwater. (6, 7)
- 57%
more plants per square foot than our first-generation systems.
- 3 levels
of support watching the same live data: local team, regional crew, central technical staff.
Technical detail
Production density
The current standard greenhouse grows about 11,500 plants a month in 2,200 square feet. The original 2017 facility grew 20,000 a month in 6,000 square feet. Per square foot, that is a 57 percent gain, and it is the reason a hub can run three compact greenhouses instead of one large one.
Vertical towers do the work. A tower holds plants on every side and stacks them upward, so a footprint that would carry a few rows of field lettuce carries many times that number.
Water
The system recirculates. Water leaves the fish tank, passes through the filters and the towers, and returns. Our internal engineering figure is about 95 percent less water than the same crop in soil; USDA's published figure for recirculating systems is up to 90 percent. We quote the conservative number on this page.
Measured water data from the current-generation system is being collected and will be published when a full season is in.
Controlled environment
Production runs year round and does not depend on rainfall or season. The greenhouse shell, the recirculating water, and the solar microgrid are designed together for drought, heat, and heavy rain: the three conditions that stop a field farm.
Monitoring and support
Sensors feed a live digital interface: nutrients, temperature, water quality, and power. The local team sees it on site and adjusts feed, flow, and timing. A regional support crew sees the same screen. So does the central technical staff in Jacksonville. A problem missed at one level is caught at the next.
Food safety
The flagship facility holds USDA Harmonized GAP certification, the food-safety standard institutional buyers such as schools and hospitals require. The same protocols travel with the model: the training covers them, and every hub is built to meet them.
