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Fábio Rosa
Brazilian social entrepreneur Fábio Rosa was instrumental in improving Brazilian farmers’ quality of life through rural electrification initiatives. His incredible creativity, unwavering pragmatism, and indefatigable perseverance enabled him to succeed in the face of enormous obstacles.

When Rosa encountered a problem, he insightfully identified and attacked the root cause rather than the symptoms. For example, when he observed the poverty of rural rice farmers in the municipality of Palmares do Sul, he realized that they were forced to buy water at exorbitantly high rates from the landowners who controlled it. According to Rosa, “Without water there was no production. And without production there was no wealth.” Artesian wells were a possibility, but rural farms did not have the electricity necessary to operate the pumps. Undaunted, Rosa developed a system for economically carrying electricity to rural farms by using simple monophase current and cheap components. Access to affordable electricity gave poor, rural farmers access to cheap irrigation as well, dramatically raising their standard of living. Rosa’s pragmatic approach motivated him to not only bring electricity to farmers at reasonable rates, but also to make it a worthwhile investment for them by coupling it with the benefit of inexpensive irrigation.

Later, Rosa sought to provide rural Brazilian farmers with solar energy. To offset the high installation costs, he integrated the electricity generation system with relatively cheap electric fences. Access to cheap fencing empowered farmers to prevent their cattle from overgrazing, thereby increasing their land’s productivity. Again, by combining two seemingly dissimilar yet mutually synergizing products into a single, marketable solution, Fábio Rosa multiplied his ability to positively change the lives of Brazilian farmers. His success must be attributed at least in part to his perceptive ability to take two seemingly unfeasible and unrelated ideas and merge them into a single, viable solution capable of bringing great good to the underserved.