Complete Farmer 2.0: The Agriculture Value Chain Evolution
This is it! The foundation for the future of African agriculture is finally here!
We set out in 2017, on a mission to build an end-to-end digital agriculture value chain, that enhances efficiency and transforms the status quo for the broken nature of the value chain that has notoriously become the brand of Africa’s food production systems. Unbeknownst to us, we had to build everything from the rudimentary blocks of this platform without losing the big picture perspective. The process of building or creating is always a life-transforming endeavor that can reshape one’s perspective, personality and can even shake previous beliefs held about people, processes, and systems. And the past three years have been a true learning for my team, partners and I.
Complete Farmer started as an effort to honor my father’s legacy after inheriting his farm when he passed away. I wanted to apply my production engineering skills to revive the farm. This moment sparked the current Complete Farmer journey as I realized challenges that were prevalent in the agriculture value chain. The underlying question for this pursuit was “how do you build a food production system that operates like a factory?”. The idea was to apply production engineering methodologies to solve the challenges that led to the failure of my father’s farm. Unlike other solutions that develop into businesses, Complete Farmer has been laser-focused on solving this question without rushing to define what the solution should be. We wanted to get our hands dirty to gain a good understanding of the mechanics of the value chain to inform our approach to how we can digitize the agriculture value chain. And that’s when it all started.
The past three years have had their fair amounts of wins and losses, highs and lows, but we have had great support from our early users, adopters, early investors, staff, friends, and family. Many of whom have shared user insights, encouragements, and have been the source of inspiration to make our wins more resounding. They are all co-creators of the Complete Farmer platform. The Complete Farmer platform has always been envisioned to be an end to end platform for the three key stakeholders on the agriculture value chain, food growers, food buyers, and food lovers. The aim is to get these stakeholders interacting with each other in a manner that increases transparency and efficiency for all these stakeholders. However, as a startup with a lack of resources, we had to start with some of the low hanging value propositions that would give us some traction and also learnings to build this solution. Hence, we started with the digital farming platform, also known as the crowd farming platform.
This was simply the beginning of the Complete Farmer story. This enabled us to learn significant lessons on ways we could digitize the agriculture value chain, but that wasn’t all Complete Farmer was designed to offer. Over the past three years, we have successfully implemented a crowdfarmer model with a total of 7,200 acres of total production serving commodities to Asia, Europe and the rest of the world. However, we have been often mistaken as a “crowdfarming” platform, rather than an end-to-end value chain platform. The challenge of building the first of such platforms was still something we have been hard at work at over the past years. Our users, who have been very active, kept advising us on ways we can do better and we listened.
Today, I am proud to say that we are ready to show you our hard work and how we have applied all the feedback and insights to build Africa’s first end-to-end digital agriculture value chain platform. This platform has been built as a three-sided marketplace where Buyers, Growers and Digifarmers can truly and transparently participate in digital agriculture. Buyers from across the globe can build entire supply chains into Africa without having to work through middlemen. They are able to get an exclusive supply of their agriculture commodities as raw materials for their utility. The platform offers Buyers the option to see what goes on from farm to warehouse while making sure that quality isn’t compromised in the process. They are able to organize the logistics needed for their sourcing needs without the hustle. This is a game-changer for the agriculture commodity markets in Africa. Complete Farmer also has a new Grower model. The Grower model works with farmers across Africa to facilitate growing crops to meet export market demands and requirements. Farmers who subscribe to the Grower platform will have access to 21st century tools and proven production protocols that enable them to be competitive in their respective value chains. They are able to scale their farms commercially with the Complete Farmer Farming Approach. This is a proprietary approach to farming that uses data-driven production protocols to grow crops to buyers’ specifications. Farmers on the grower platform can get agronomic support and leverage on the Complete Farmer digital value chain to avoid middlemen and access premium markets.
We are no longer a crowdfarming platform. We are happy to build a differentiated product to truly depict what actual farming is about. We are proud to also introduce the Digifarmer. This is the new way of farming. Farming is now a lifestyle than an occupation, and our existing Crowdfarmers and new users can farm digitally on their devices and get to monitor the whole action. We are bringing digital farming to the masses — from the bank teller in Lagos to the business executive in London. These individuals get to actually sell their own commodities to the buyer of their choice on the platform and also see what happens post-harvest. This gives more control to our users in the process. The new sleek dashboard design has been built to bring the true farm experience to your fingertips. We have also taken our customer support to the next level with this new platform. This is thanks to our users who participated in all the focus groups in the development of this platform. We are very grateful for your insights and hope this is something that makes you proud as well. We have had to build and invest in the technology infrastructure both on the farms and have integrated with other technologies to make this possible.
Complete Farmer’s vision is to create a world that eats together by working together. We are relentless and determined to push the boundaries of what is possible. This year our targets are high and we look forward to more future success with our platform. Look forward to seeing Complete Farmer start operations in Kenya and Togo as we scale across Africa. We will be counting on your usual feedback as we continually work to improve our solution. Thanks for being loyal to Complete Farmer. The upcoming launch marks the beginning of a whole new suite of solutions that is aimed at transforming agriculture. We can proudly say “this is truly our approach to solving the problem of food insecurity. We believe in tomorrow and we believe solving one of humanity’s greatest needs is very fulfilling. This is why we would like to invite you to share a part of it because it should be a shared responsibility to ensure that we can feed tomorrow and the next billion. I am personally super excited about this and can’t wait for the launch to share what we are building with you.
