A new muscle for little companies

The initiative innovating the market, improving nutrition by using soja.

 

By Nelson Peñaherrera 

SULLANA, Peru – Like a clock at six in the morning, the soja milk seller appears. Riding a mototaxi with many cubes, he offers the White fluid by liters to  Nuevo Sullana neighborhood, one among western section of the city. A family guy who knows on natural soja nutritional facts listen to him and doubts on buying. “What about if it were from a bag?”

Inside a supermarket in downtown, many displays are prepared waiting for hundred of buyers who will come in daily. Also cow milk and derivates, canned and powdered soja milk is offered especially for ones who do not tolerate lactose. Few buyers will realize on nutritional facts of the product. If it is soja, although it does not specify where the product comes from, there are also conservant chemicals like in many of industrialized products.

Back in Nuevo Sullana, the doubting family guy gets ready for his exercise routine of every morning. His goal is increasing muscle mass so he prepares his rustic apparel in one of his home’s  rooms after having a natural breakfast enriched with protein. While he flexes his arms using dumbbells, he thinks on the idea his friend told him months ago – the possibility to commerce natural soja products.

Health specialists explain that soja owns a peculiar vitamin cocktail –unique in vegetables-, protein and isoflavones. The bean is also recommended for pregnant mothers because it improves hormonal segregation necessary for  fetus’ good formation. And the best part – it has no secondary effects even provided it is natural.

 

Everything is useful

“Soja milk is wrong!,” manager Carolina Cruz corrects me again. She is the Nutritional Relief Based on Soja Program (Pan-Soy as in Spanish) territorial coordinator in Piura. “The right is saying soja juice. ” Pan-soy is a NGO established in 2010 promoting the formation of communitarian little companies those decide to supply the market with products made of soja juice or paste. 

“Normally, they make us to drink soja but the paste goes as food for animals when it has the same nutritional facts,” Cruz adds. “With paste, you can make several products for desserts like a soja big bread,” Pan-Soy’s coordinator Susana Carey affirms. “Even we have a little company that participated in Mixtura,” the gastronomical festival created by reknown chef Gaston acurio, that in Peru is a sort of acooking hall of fame.

In Chapaira village, Castilla District, even the TV Peru’s hostess Sonaly Tuesta dedicated many minutes to know the experience of a little company promoted by Pan-Soy. Currently, there are 25 of them in 17 districts of Piura Department, specifically in Morropon, Piura, sechura, Sullana and Talara Provinces.

 

Seed Capital

To join a little company, it is required five people at most who postulate to Pan-Soy’s annual calling. If it is selected, it is supplied with a processing mini-plant and about 800 pounds of certified natural soja like a seed capital. The mini-plant is composed by a semi-industrial stove, blender and an oven for cakes plus a work table. Obviously, the little company must have a space where all machines enter and all healthy rules are kept.

Soja comes from Linderos de Maray village, in Santa Catalina de Mossa Andean District.

Pan-Soy coordinators, local authorities and farmers assure the crop is totally organic, as much as every cropping goes to a laboratory  to verify it. “We care not to offer a transgenic product,” a farmer says. And all cautions are valid considering that Monsanto, the major global corporation of transgenic seed, could be renting experimentation acres in La Matanza, 35 miles to the southwest but crossing a bold branch of Andean Range.

The quality of Linderos de Maray’s soja is such that it also has served  to supply companies promoted by Pan-Soy in San Martin Department, about 400 miles to the southeast and almost 18 hours by bus.

 

The upper grade

The little companies promoted by Pan-Soy have a kind of cooking creative freedom. In fact, including the seed capital they receive once, they get business, nutritional and even gastronomical advisory. “What we look for is those companies to be socially accountable, so we commit them to donate at least 100 daily portions  to proven poor people ,” Carolina Cruz explains. 

Portions are deductible from utilities of every little company and it is a way to inspire solidarity, but Pan-Soy coordinators clarify this must not open doors to lazy relief. When the little company gets self-sustainable and profitable, Pan-Soy can upgrade it to next level: to postulate for the seed capital to be granted as own capital. If everything goes wrong, machinery is removed and gets ready for another group able to start up.

Now their challenge is introduce their little companies’ products into locally competitive spaces like supermarkets  of Piura’s major cities, especially Piura and Sullana, those together represent 35% of departmental population. Its comparative advantage is quality, safety and variety at a really attractive price. 

For the family guy in Nuevo Sullana the decision is obvious: “I prefer Piura product what I know it’s natural rather  than Lima one what I don’t know if it’s so.” Now his new doubt is if Pan-Soy product line takes the displays, how does it guarantee its freshness considering it has no conservant chemicals? 

He finishes his routine. Another looking to the mirror. “Have you seen my biceps?,” he asks himself. After taking a bath, he surfs on the Internet to learn more about Pan-soy. He meets a friend later to discuss business ideas from information he gathers. As talkings go on, it is probable they postulate to the next calling…

 

© 2015 Asociación Civil Factor Tierra. All Rights Reserved. Photos on this entry by Dandy Ruíz and Sonaly Tuesta.