We proudly share this Progress Report (December 2019) prepared by Ana Terranova in Colombia with the UN World Food Programme 'Innovation Accelerator' Project that we cooperate with in the Municipalities of Almaguer.

The report contains a wealth of photos showing the high growth rate and production of the fruit trees in combination with vegetables.

Please find the report here:

Download the report "UN World Food Programme with Groasis - Zero Hunger by 2030"

On September 17, 2018 the project, The Unconventional Tree, started in Nuequén, Argentina. This (pilot) project is being carried out by three different parties: Shell is part of this project as owner and promoter; The company Halkis agriculture provides technical support for the project; Groatec is the official distributor of Groasis from the Netherlands and takes care of the delivery of the Growboxx® plant cocoons.

Groasis gets a lot of feedback from projects that have carried out by Waterboxx® plant cocoon buyers. We cannot plant all these places on earth by ourselves, and therefore we have a great Green Musketeer community who plant trees with our technology. One of these projects with the Waterboxx® plant cocoon has been carried out in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. We want to thank Tracey, Sarah and Tricia from the City of Calargy for this.

In 2017, Groasis has been selected through the United Nations World Food Program Innovation Accelerator, to run a project in order to investigate the impact that the Groasis Ecological Water Saving Technology can have on reaching the “Zero Hunger by 2030” target. You can read the complete press message here.

In the diary below, you can read the daily messages from Ana Terranova, our official Groasis distributor who leads the project in Colombia in cooperation with David Arango from Biofog, our distributor in Colombia, on behalf of Groasis. To see all the pictures of this project, please check out our photo album. 

In the Dubai several projects have been conducted while planting Ghaf trees (Prosopis Cinerea). Various trees have been planted on 14th of June, 2015. In each Waterboxx® plant cocoon, 2 trees have been planted. One of the two trees received a Growsafe Telescoprotexx as a protection against the sun, and the other tree had to grow without.

The pictures below show the difference between the trees planted in Dubai with the Growsafe Telescoprotexx and the trees planted without the Growsafe Telescoprotexx. The temperature during the planting period was always above 40⁰C. The photos show that the tree in the Growsafe Telescoprotexx grows twice as fast!

The Agua, Vida y Naturaleza Project (AVNP) – Water, Life and Nature project – has been established between 2012 and 2014. The project started on January 3, 2012 in Ecuador. During this project, various vegetable and fruit trees were planted with 70% less water. 

On July 28, 2014, the first Green Musketeer project of Groasis has started. In total, 3.000 students planted two trees in Santa Elena, Ecuador. The project is called ‘Be a Green Musketeer, a future for the childhood in Ecuador’. 

Instead of focussing on fear, Pieter Hoff chose to develop the Green Musketeer concept, based on the idea 'planting trees' is synonymous to 'having fun'. He inspired a Dutch philanthropist to finance a pilot and received 325K Euros for it (the project is financed by the COmON Foundation from the Netherlands). 40 Schools in the poorest part if Ecuador participated in a competition of planting trees, whereas participating schools received computers – value is a half year salary in Ecuador - for their participation. The schoolchildren had ages between 9 and 11 years old. From each school the 5 children with the 5 highest trees after a year, the 5 schools with the 5 highest total length of the trees and the 5 children of all the schools with the 5 highest trees received an extra computer.

The Galapagos Islands have a volcanic origin and belong to Ecuador. You can find many unique plant and animal species on the Galapagos Islands. Because there are a few predators on the islands, the selection pressure of the animals was different and they have evolved in a special way.

But, there are species threatened with extinction on the Galapagos Islands. There is no fresh water, and there are no sources. Fresh water is brought by a ship from the mainland. For this reason, the islands were once inhabited. The fresh water was scarce.

In May 2012, our distributor from Jordan, Deserttulip, started with a project with the Waterboxx® plant cocoon in Sakeb, Jordan. The project was financed by the Jordan River Foundation. In total, 125 Waterboxx® plant cocoons have been planted with mostly grapes.

Planting trees in the desert of Kuwait? The organization Kuwait Oasis has accepted this challenge. To test the functioning of the Waterboxx® plant cocoon in the most extreme conditions, Ghaf trees were planted during an extreme hot summer season (May 2012) in the southern part of the desert of Kuwait.

The southern part of the desert of Kuwait has multiple challenges for the Waterboxx® plant cocoon and Kuwait Oasis. This area has a lack of life and species (as you can see on the image below), there was no rainfall during the summer, the humidity was around 35% and the temperatures rose to an extreme of 50 ⁰C.

At the beginning of 2018 we have started a project with the biodegradable Growboxx® plant cocoon in Mexicali, Mexico. The project has been carried out by Pronatura and financed by SPA (Secretaría de Protección al Ambiente of the State of Baja California). It is a remarkable place to plant trees. The area suffers from sandstorms and hares’ plagues.

In addition, the temperature differences during the year are also large. In January it can drop below freezing, while during the summer it can rise to 60°C. In addition, there is an annual rainfall of 50 mm. In comparison, the annual rainfall in the Netherlands is 695 mm.

What if the summer is extremely hot, you lack water, spring and autumn are cold but you still want to grow vegetables and fruit trees? In 2018 we've built an affordable, simple and movable greenhouse on the property of the Podesta family in Baja California, Mexico.

Although the summer is extremely hot, spring and autumn nights are normally too cold to grow. With this affordable greenhouse and while using the Growboxx® plant cocoon, this family now has the opportunity to harvest vegetables and at the same time plant a new lemon tree orchard, while extending their growth season.

The Sahara-Roots Foundation was founded in 2008 to help create awareness amongst the population in the area of the M’hamid village (in the South of Morocco), about the importance of maintaining their beautiful environment. The activities are focused on planting trees against desertification, assisting in clean-up campaigns and in stimulating the local school children by distributing and reading Wanda Hebly’s (founder of Sahara Roots) own-designed booklet “Me and my Sahara”.

There is a variety of interconnected issues related to the climate change impacts - these include increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, traffic related emissions, soil degradation and subsequent loss of agricultural capacity and landscape, as well as loss of bio-diversity and eco-systems. One of the most devastating consequences of climate change is the desertification of areas that have previously provided important functions in terms of carbon sequestration, food production and landscape conservation. Tree planting, like this project in Spain, can help overcome these problems and innovative planting techniques are required to properly regenerate some degraded areas.

Bill McNeese, a loyal and innovative Waterboxx® plant cocoon user, has carried out many vegetables projects in his garden in Hemet, California. His projects differ from trying to set a new Guinness Book Record for the 'Most tomatoes from a single plant', getting over 15 different saladspecies from a single Waterboxx® at the same time, producing over 4,300 tomatoes from a single plant, growing tomatoes during the winter and much more!

Do you want to start growing food in a water saving and sustainable way too? Visit our online store and purchase one of our boxes!