Solar Fruit Dehydrators for MicroEntrepreneurs

Dear Friends and Supporters,

We’ve been hard at work on our 2024 new design for our solar food dehydrator, and I’m thrilled to share our progress. Solar dehydrators are a critical solution for many farming families and cooperatives in Guatemala. During the rainy season, there is often an abundance of fresh produce, but much of it goes to waste because it cannot be stored. Unfortunately, this leaves many families, especially children, vulnerable to food shortages and malnutrition during the dry season.

Our solar dehydrators help solve this problem by enabling farmers to preserve their harvests, ensuring they have access to nutritious food year-round. This is particularly important for the areas we serve, where malnutrition rates in children are high, over 60%, during the dry season. Dehydrating fruits, vegetables, and herbs provides a sustainable way to keep food available long after the harvest is over.

Progress on the Solar Dehydrator Design:

We’ve been testing our latest dehydrator model in the bright sunlight and heavy rains of Guatemala’s highlands. While we’ve seen great improvements in how efficiently the dehydrator preserves food, we encountered a setback with the pre-coated plywood we initially used. Though it was designed to last for a decade in Guatemala’s climate, it didn’t hold up as expected. We’re now exploring different coatings, testing several durable options both with and without primers, to find a cost-effective solution that works for the farmers and communities we serve.

On a positive note, our new design dries food faster and more evenly than ever before. We've integrated an inexpensive solar-powered fan that circulates air around the food, preventing the outside of moist fruits like mangoes and bananas from hardening before the inside is properly dried. While this may seem technical, these small improvements make a big difference in the quality of the food preserved, and we’re excited to share our advancements with others.

Workshops and Community Engagement:

We’re collaborating with a group of farm families in the Ixil region of Guatemala to train them in using these solar dehydrators. Once we finalize the best coatings for long-term durability, we’ll begin offering workshops at our test site in Tzununa. These workshops will teach farmers, cooperatives, and nonprofit groups how to build and use our dehydrator designs. There’s a growing interest in learning more, and we’re eager to share these skills.

In addition to dehydrator workshops, many participants have expressed interest in our other training programs. Alongside solar dehydration, we also teach classes on designing and installing small solar power systems, building pumps for small farms, and providing basic business education.

Looking Ahead:

I’ll soon be traveling back to Guatemala to oversee accelerated weather testing of the dehydrator coatings and continue our work on perfecting the dehydrators. While there, we’ll also install solar power on approximately 70 homes and add safety and data-collection circuits to one of our demonstration solar installations.

As we approach the end of 2024, we’re gearing up for a big financial push. We’ll be reaching out to all of our ATC friends for support as we aim to expand our impact during these last few weeks of the year.  Think of it as a bright Christmas for hundreds of people and a new year with enough food to get a family through the year without outside gifts of bags of food.  Dignity is worth more than money.

Finally, I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to one of our generous donors whose contribution has accelerated our testing and teaching on solar dehydrators. Because of this support, we’ll be able to distribute dehydrators to farming cooperatives before the year’s end—just in time to help them prepare for the next rainy season.

A Delicious Bonus!

On a fun note, during a recent solar installation trip to rural Guatemala, we were able to enjoy big bags of freshly dehydrated mangoes and bananas made with our dehydrators. Let me tell you, the flavor was amazing! It’s a small reminder of how impactful these projects can be—and how delicious the results are.

Thank you all so much for your continued support. You are making a real difference in the lives of families and communities in Guatemala.

With gratitude,

John Barrie

Director

The Appropriate Technology Collaborative