Starter Kit. Idea 449 of 500. Cluster 23
Tissue-culture laboratories growing banana, pineapple and foliage plantlets by the million, disease-free, for the farms of Asia, Africa and the Gulf
The mechanism, from the book
The single largest unused asset in the country is sitting at home. Much of what keeps it there (childcare, safe transport, working hours) can be sold as a service, and the industries that would employ it can be built.
The first step
Visit a university plant-science department and ask whether a graduate could rent laboratory time to start. Choose one crop, such as banana, and learn the method for growing clean plantlets. Ask large farms and nurseries what they pay for disease-free plants and how many they need. The proof is one farm's order for a first batch.
- Who pays first
- A large farm or nursery replanting a field that wants plants it knows are disease-free, and pays more for them.
- What leaves today
- Science graduates leave or sit idle; a laboratory sells their skill by the million plants to farms here and abroad.
Ask first
- Department of Agriculture. Ask what rules apply to producing and selling plantlets, and how plants are certified disease-free.
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask which countries' farms buy plantlets and what papers an export needs.
Check before you spend
Confirm a plant health certificate for every batch, the permits for moving plant material across borders, and the cleanliness standard of the laboratory.
Find out these three numbers
- What do farms pay for one disease-free plantlet?
- What does a small laboratory cost to equip?
- How many plantlets can one laboratory produce a month?
A comparison from the book
Costa Rica. Chapter Eleven
"trained technicians, local suppliers, and the skill of meeting the world's safety rules"
Skill and standards are what buyers pay for, and the laboratory sells both in every plant.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.