🌽Update #5 ~ PayOut for Maize I 2021 and Maize II 2020 Sponsors
Hello Sponsors,
We are happy that you have been part of this amazing journey so far. A journey to make a difference in Africa’s agriculture industry, starting in Ghana. In this update, we will outline how recovery, drying, rebagging, and trading are progressing and how payouts will be done. We will give guidance on how to access your funds after payouts have been done to your preferred channel.
After harvesting, a number of post-harvest activities are triggered. Farmers thresh their wet-maize and pack them into 150kg sacks with moisture content (MC) between 20% to 25%. Grow For Me then recovers these bags and transports them to drying facilities for drying. Drying reduces the moisture content in the grain. Moisture Content is the amount of water in freshly harvested grains or products. The average MC for maize for any off-taker (eg. animal feed producing company) to buy is 12.5%.
Drying reduces the moisture content within the grain and the weight significantly. It also enables easy processing by feed millers and gives the grains longer shelf life. Without drying in a short time after harvest, all the grains will become moldy and develop a naturally occurring fungus that produces a toxin called Aflatoxin. High aflatoxin levels render the harvest useless and give zero market value to the harvest. Hence the need to take great care to retrieve and dry in a systematic way.
High aflatoxin levels render the harvest useless and give zero market value.
After drying the grains are rebagged into 50kg or 100kg sacks and transported to off-takers (feed processing companies) for sale by (Grow For Me — Trade) our trade department. We then receive payment for the commodities sold. Then you are paid (sponsorship plus profit share) as a sponsor to your preferred channel. In the video below, you will see how drying and bagging are progressing.
Then you are paid (sponsorship plus profit share) as a sponsor to your preferred channel.
Currently, different smallholder farmers who received funding from us are at different stages of the post-harvest processes. Twenty (20%) of harvest have been retrieved, dried, rebadged, and about to be sold to the Greater Accra Poultry Farmers Association (GAPFA) located in Accra. Our first set of commodities is being transported this week for sale. From which we will pay sponsors and continue through the process until we have sold all the maize and paid all sponsors. The payout process to sponsors has started and you should be receiving your money as we progress with recovery and trade.
Kwaeyase and Donkro-Nkwanta are two of the farming communities we funded multiple smallholder farmers. About 40% of this year’s harvest is expected to come from Kwaeyase and another 40% from Donkro-Nkwanta. Access roads to these communities are these few weeks are temporarily not motorable due to excess rainfall and some flooding. Currently, impossible to access some farms and transport maize on tricycles to drying facilities. Each bag of maize transported by a tricycle weighs 150 kg, a tricycle can carry three(3) of these adding an extra 450kg to the weight of the tricycle. Considering the total weight, it will be important to wait for rains to recede before and transporting the bags to drying facilities. If we try to transport the maize through the roads at this time, all the vehicles will get stuck in the mud and the harvest will not be able to get to the drying facilities in time. Hence we will need to wait out the rains. Please watch the video below to have a glimpse and feel of the limitations placed on recovery by existing rains.
We will not wait for all the harvest to be retrieved before we trade and payout sponsors. We will do that as an ongoing process. The reason for this step is to enable us to fulfill our initial plan to payout by this time, secondly, we have an estimate of the total amount of maize we can recover. Our projections show that the potential return on your sponsorship (ROS) is about 10%. Details of this can be found in your account under finance.
You will find returns under the Farm Returns tab payouts will be an ongoing process hence, sponsors will receive payouts at different periods, some before others until we have successfully recovered all bags, sell and pay back sponsors. As a sponsor made 11.56% ROS on their sponsorship for this crop cycle. ROS is calculated before transfer charges
The next step is to review the different payout options and select your preferred option, if you have already done that then, please ignore this step.
There are four (4) methods of payouts with different charges and cost. In summary:
- Virtual Cards (International) cost $ 0.50 to fund,
2. Mobile Money (Ghana) cost 1% to fund,
3. Bank Transfer (International) cost $ 40 to pay back:
Payments are done directly into your bank account from our accounts through bank transfers. This takes about one-two day to two weeks to reflect.
4. Bank Transfer (Ghana) costs GHS 25 to pay back.
Payments are done directly into your bank account from our account through local bank transfers. This takes about two to five days to reflect.
