‘Tech-Ing’ Rural Agriculture to the Next Level!
Digital Technology As a Driver of Scale 📈
Food is the most fundamental human need. Small farms, usually less than 2 hectares, produce about 90% of the world’s agricultural output. In spite of the high output, smallholder farmers continue to live underprivileged lifestyles due to lack of proper channels to support and empower them. They never live to enjoy the fruits of their labor because challenges like lack of access to critical production factors such as credit, inputs (seeds, fertilizers, pesticides), relevant data and production technologies, as well as poor access to output markets.
Emerging evidence indicates that digital technology has the potential to significantly increase smallholder farming productivity and incomes by increasing on-farm and off-farm efficiency, improving traceability, reducing vulnerability to counterfeit products, and improving farmers’ access to output, input, and financial markets.
The introduction of new forms of intermediation and the use of big data in agriculture is driving the change and disrupting existing business models.
New strategic partnerships between the public and private sectors are critical for reaping the benefits of digital technology while avoiding unintended and undesirable secondary effects.
The agricultural sector is being transformed by digital technology through the use of innovative tools and new business models. For the first time, many people along the value chain, including smallholder farmers, have access to real-time data and computational power, allowing for more effective product-to-market decisions, credit provision, and access to micro-insurance. This is typically described as a top-down process in which researchers develop the innovation, extension workers promote its use, and farmers adopt or reject the innovation based on the features that are important to them. A farmer in rural Africa is now able to connect to the world and reap the benefits of their hard and hand work of providing food to 90% of the world population.
Revolutionizing Rural Agriculture:
The Farmz2u Way
As a leader in the digital space in Africa, Farmz2u has digitized agricultural data for smallholder farmers in rural areas of Nigeria and Kenya in order to generate networking effects that drive scale. The motivation has been shortening the value chain and increasing profitability for the smallholder farmer. And we’re extending this to aggregators and medium scale farmers who face similar challenges. Representing ‘Growers’, primary producers.
Farmz2u has leveraged on the growing acceptance of the sharing economy, digitization and artificial intelligence to develop hybrid and dynamic business models and platforms that connect farmers directly with credit, markets, service providers, and aggregators. This has resulted in the removal of many intermediaries, which has significantly lowered the cost of farming to the Growers while also solving issues like price exploitation, lack of quality agricultural extension services.
Our goal is to create a sustainable and efficient network in this $1 trillion agricultural industry in Sub-Sahara Africa by revolutionizing the African smallholder agricultural systems.
Importantly, Farmz2u’s perceived benefits go beyond increased output and returns. The integration of digital technology in Agriculture is attracting job-seeking and entrepreneurial youth to practice farming. This is expected to address the challenge of unemployment, in Africa’s youth continent, while also ensuring business model sustainability.
“Agriculture is the greatest and fundamentally the most important of our industries. The cities are but the branches of the tree of national life, the roots of which go deeply into the land. We all flourish or decline with the farmer.”
Bernard Baruch
At Farmz2u, we are building the operational engine for growers, suppliers and buyers. We believe in the power of technology accelerating value creation in the agricultural sector thus ensuring food security on the African continent.
