Heloise Buckland, Co-Founder of HUSK “Our mission is to regenerate degraded soils, sink carbon and improve lives”
Meet Heloise Buckland, Co-Founder of HUSK
1. Describe your startup in two sentences?
We are one of the leading carbon based fertilizer companies for emerging markets. We take leftover husks from rice mills and transform them into biofertilizers to regenerate degraded soils, sequester carbon and improve smallholders livelihoods. We have pioneered this model in Cambodia and are now starting to replicate across SE Asia.
2. What gave you the inspiration?
The short answer is Cambodian farmers, who have been ´cooking´ rice husk to make biochar to improve their soils for thousands of years.
The long answer is that the inspiration has been nurtured over the last five years by many individuals who have supported us along the way, including expert agronomists who have validated our crop trials, corporate carbon managers who have bought our credits, biochar experts motivating us to lead the way in emerging markets, impact investors inspired by financial and social return, foundations who have awarded us grants and prizes, distributors who keep buying our products and most of all our highly motivated Cambodian team of agronomists, sales experts and engineers.
As founders we are two women deeply passionate about making a difference and building a company that could leave a genuinely positive impact not only on individuals lives, but also on the planet. The more we delved into finding a solution to a very complex problem: the vicious cycle of poverty, soil degradation and climate change, the more our drive grew.
3. How did you meet?
We met in a coffee break at ESADE business school conference in Barcelona. I had given a presentation on social innovation in Latin America, Carol was attending as a social impact investor and founder of a marketing agency in Asia. I was inspired by her international business experience, she was excited by my track record in social impact. There was clearly a spark and we decided to meet again. Our second meet-up was to plan our talks on ‘inclusive business strategies´ at another conference and we decided we needed to be setting up our own gig --- not talking about others!
4. What has been your greatest success to date? And your greatest challenge?
Our greatest success has been proving a viable, impactful, scalable regenerative agriculture business in an emerging market and most recently proving that our products are successful on rice, the world’s third largest crop.
We have built the world's carbon-based fertilizer plant in a rice mill and proven a product market fit, whereby smallholder farmers who earn less than 5 dollars are not only regenerating their soil for long term food security but also making a positive return on investment using our products. Our greatest challenge has been setting up something that has never been done before, in a country like Cambodia.
5. What kind of impact is your business having and how do you measure it?
Our mission is to regenerate degraded soils, sink carbon and improve lives. To date we have sequestered over 650 tonnes of carbon, improved 700 hectares of land and impacted the lives of 4,000 farmers. We are constantly fine-tuning our theory of change and working towards a better understanding of how we can tackle the vicious cycle of soil degradation, climate change, and poverty, and penetrate a fast-changing fertilizer market with more climate resilient solutions for farmers.
With 150 million tonnes of rice husk produced globally and 1.5 billion people who depend on cultivating rice for a living, and a growing market of biostimulants valued at $4BN we are not short of inspiration to go for significant impact and value creation for all our stakeholders.
6. How has Covid affected your business?
Initially we faced the challenge common to many companies: adapt to a remote modus operandi at a very early stage of the business which at the time meant working across several different time zones with digital governance across multiple cultures and time zones.
However, the far more significant impact from Covid on our business has been the disruption to global fertilizer supply chains over the last 18 months. The price of Urea and other key chemical fertilisers has doubled in this period and the demand for biofertilizers with high Nutrient Uptake Efficiency (NUE) has significantly increased. Our products are now competitive with not only other organic fertilizers but also help to reduce the demand for chemical inputs given the high absorption capacity of the carbon component of our products.
7. When you were little what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be an explorer and co-founder Carol a Wall Street broker.
8. If you weren’t doing this, what would be your plan B?
There is no plan B! Or in other words, if we weren´t running HUSK we´d be doing something pretty similar. Now that we´re hooked on finding a solution for soil degradation, climate change and poverty it would take something very big to push us in a different direction.
9.What would you save in a fire?
After loved ones (of course), we’d grab our latest biofertilizer formula!
10. Who is your role model/ greatest influence? And why?
We are both hugely inspired by our growing network of female entrepreneurs who are building teams, generating impact, and making a difference in so many ways. There is no she-guru but we are proud to know a lot of people doing amazing things.
11. What is your happy track?
September Fields by Frazey Ford
12. What’s your motto?
Farmer first!
13. What are you most looking forward to in 2023?
Installing our new pyrolysis unit in Cambodia and starting our first replicate plant in the Philippines.