vision
AMBITION
We want to promote sustainable development, which is applicable both to the countries of the Mediterranean basin and to the developing economies of Africa and the Middle East.
“We can make unused land productive, producing food, fodder and energy. At a cost never seen before, and with compatible economic development that improves the environment.”
Fabrizio Sibilla
Founder & Technical Director
Wakonda has implemented a development system that follows the principles of circular economy, a system that makes marginal land no longer usable for traditional agricultural production productive.
Thanks to our methodologies it is possible to achieve yields of up to a thousand tons of fresh product per hectare per year, with an extremely low cost per ton. This is up to four times higher productivity than corn, using up to 10 times less water. In semi-arid areas the Wakonda system makes the development of animal breeding possible, both for meat and milk production.
The Ofi transformation process allows us to obtain healthy, high-quality feed products, and also to produce high-protein animal feed suitable for sustainable farming.
Our technology allows us to start an exclusive fermentation system which allows us to raise the protein content of the feed produced up to 30% of the dry substance, creating the conditions to reduce the dependence on foreign fertilizers and feed and to source the increasingly growing demand for meat and milk available on the market.
AGENDA 2030
The United Nations 2030 Agenda pursues a list of 17 objectives. The Wakonda system contributes to the achievement of 13 of these, with particular attention to food production, adaptation to climate change and poverty reduction.
No poverty
We have the ambition of making available a system that allows the development of arid and semi-arid areas of the planet, making cultivation and livestock farming possible in areas where it is not possible now, at an accessible price, with the result of increasing income available and reduce relative and absolute poverty.
Zero hunger
Our greatest ambition is to feed the planet and help defeat hunger. Opuntia is perfect for this objective, because it allows us to recover less fertile and marginal land and produce animal feed precisely where it is most difficult or impossible to raise animals.
Good health and well-being
Opuntia manages to regenerate soil polluted by heavy metals and hydrocarbons, which often generate serious problems due to the pollution of aquifers. From Opuntia it is also possible to produce bio-flocculants at low cost, for the purification of waste water and their reuse in the agricultural field.
Gender equality
“Work” is the main tool for female “empowerment”, for truly achieving gender equality. Most of Wakonda’s production and processing activities can be managed by women, the mechanization of plantation and processing allows them to work without the need to use great muscular effort.
Clean water and sanitation
The efficient management of water resources is a distinctive point of the Wakonda project, thanks to which triple the production of corn can be obtained on one hectare of land, consuming 10 times less water. The water saved or extracted from Ofi can be used for other uses, improving living conditions and/or agricultural production.
Affordable and clean energy
Ofi is the ideal plant to obtain large quantities of biogas for electric cogeneration or biomethane in a sustainable way: it is the cultivation that most effectively coexists with agro-voltaic fields, in particular on marginal or unproductive land for traditional crops.
Decent work and economic growth
Wakonda is an ideal system for developing arid and semi-arid areas of the planet, i.e. areas that are suffering the consequences of climate change. It is possible to encourage widespread, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, dignified work both for women than men, in the most depressed areas of the Mediterranean basin and in sub-Saharan Africa.
Industry, innovation and infrastructures
Wakonda is a model that can be reproduced in multiple countries, in a plug & play mode, with a technology transfer model aimed at encouraging development even in depressed areas or with low human impact, generating employment and sustainable growth in the medium and long term.
Reduces inequalities
The economic growth achievable through the adoption of Wakonda is a harbinger of an increase in jobs and an income distribution that starts from the primary sector, agriculture, and therefore, by definition, tends to reduce income inequalities and inequalities.
Sustainable cities and communities
Opuntia contributes to the bioremediation of land, allows the recovery of vast abandoned areas, guarantees biodiversity thanks to its rusticity and low or no input of agrochemicals, prevents hydrogeological instability, and is a natural fire barrier.
Responsibile consumption and production
With the Wakonda model applied on large plots of land, it is possible to simultaneously produce healthy foods, feed for animal breeding, biomethane and solid and liquid digestate: all this on marginal land and with a low water footprint, therefore in a process that is sustainable from the point of view environmental.
Climate action
The Wakonda model allows you to best produce feed, food and bioenergy from the same hectare of land, providing a tool for adapting to the local effects of climate change.
Life on land
Wakonda contributes to protecting, restoring and promoting sustainable use of the land ecosystem, combating desertification, stopping land degradation, stopping the loss of biological diversity. This can be done with medium/low capital intensity investments compared to long-term shares.