Venture update by Féro! Féro develops bamboo greenhouse systems in Senegal that combine agroforestry and food production to restore degraded land while significantly increasing farmers’ incomes. Here’s an update!
Féro is building an integrated model for regenerative agriculture by combining mid-tech bamboo greenhouses with biodiverse agroforestry systems. Designed for smallholder farmers in Senegal, their approach makes land restoration economically viable by significantly increasing productivity and income. Following their 2023 BK Launch Entrepreneurship Award, the team is currently prototyping and testing their first greenhouse for future scale-up.
Over the past centuries, large areas of forest have been cleared worldwide to make way for agriculture. In Senegal, this has led to widespread land degradation and declining rural livelihoods. To help reverse this trend, Féro has developed an integrated model that combines profitable 400 m² mid-tech bamboo greenhouses with biodiverse agroforestry systems. This approach enables smallholder farmers to increase their incomes by more than tenfold, making land restoration economically attractive for farmers who currently farm only three months per year under monoculture systems.
Our greenhouse design uses sustainably sourced bamboo as the primary structural material and incorporates an active cooling system to maintain high crop productivity despite rising temperatures. With support from the BK Launch Entrepreneurship Award, we have spent the past year prototyping our first minimum viable product (MVP) greenhouse in Kholpa, a rural village near Dakar. The bamboo was sustainably harvested from forests in southern Senegal, and the prototype features our distinctive flower-shaped roof design.
Throughout the construction process, we have gained valuable technical insights, most notably confirming that bamboo is a significantly stronger and more reliable structural material than initially anticipated. The project has already sparked strong interest among local farmers in Kholpa, many of whom are now engaging with our vision of regenerating farmland through productive, climate-resilient greenhouses embedded in agroforestry systems.
Scaling this model remains a challenge, particularly due to limited access to finance among marginalized smallholder farmers. In parallel, we have encountered an important operational lesson. During the dry season, cattle herders pass through the farms in search of forage, resulting in the loss of our newly planted agroforestry seedlings. This was a setback. This experience has highlighted the necessity of integrating robust fencing into future implementations.
We are on track to complete the first full greenhouse in Q2 2026. More updates will follow as we move toward operational deployment and scale-up. So stay tuned!
Read more about Féro here
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