When Growers Succeed, Everyone Wins
Agribusiness trading is evolving rapidly around the world, and fast-changing in ways that no one could have predicted even a few years ago; as consumers continue to push for certified crops and demand traceability from farm to fork; invariable mounting pressure on growers to reinvent farming methods by embracing best practices, new technologies and data analysis systems.
This certainly cannot be said of growers in developing economies like Africa, of which majority consist, smallholders who hardly invest in technology to improve yields, lack basic knowledge of agricultural practices, crop quality standardization, lack access to the premium market, readily available logistics, amongst others.
As a result, these growers are not able to negotiate directly with buyers, but rather faced with unfavorable and difficult payment terms, speculative pricing, and not able to access financing due to cumbersome bank loan process essentially holding back cash flow to grow their agribusinesses.
Operating in such volatile markets as an agricultural technology company could lead to plenty of opportunities for growth, scalability, and profits, but also comes with higher risks and uncertainty. While commodity markets have always been volatile, decision making in such markets are especially multidimensional, with events from extreme weather, low literacy rates, cash-based transactions, political changes, unstable tariffs, price and currency fluctuations, internet penetration, new technology adaptability, human resource, etc. would continue to impact growth and operations.
New technologies could shift agribusiness power away from buyers to growers across the continent if embraced in no time. Imagine the journey that your food takes after it leaves the farm — passing through many hands and processes as it gets to your dinner table. Who assures the crop quality? How credible is the quality assurance process? Besides what you can see and smell how else can you verify the quality of what is before you at our dinner table?
To provide answers to these questions and more, the Zowasel platform is further developing a seamless digital platform to connect growers and buyers through blockchain technology to ensure that growers get the best price for their produce — and the buyers also get the best quality of products based on their specifications, which are verified by nodes over the blockchain network.
With the credibility of both, the buyer and the seller ensured, the campaign to getting the traditional crop markets activated online: a win-win situation for both, growers as well as consumers. The use of blockchain technology in the agricultural sector can help the consumer keep a perfect track of where their crops for food production are coming from. For instance using RFID tags, the data from which can be stored over blockchain-based ledgers, you can simply be able to scan a QR-code and track the journey of your food product right from the farm it was produced into the warehouses it was stored in — and from the wholesalers to the retailer — and ultimately to you.
This could ensure that the food that you get in the end is fresh as all the data are recorded with dates.
Could this possibly put an end to poor quality practices and crop standardization on growers part, malpractices such as false advertising and labeling from food producers part? Also, imagine that you could check and track the quality of crops used for your food before you eat it?
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