By Stephen Odonga
SPONSORED
Formyfarm app is a feature rich, Innovative and disruptive smartphone-only based technology to bring smallholder farmers into the digital world of e-commerce.
The strategy of Formyfarm app is to change the way smallholder farmers and buyers currently trade to the benefit of smallholder farmers, creating a vastly more level playing field for all participants. It creates for the first time in farming history, a ‘win-win’ relationship between smallholder farmers and middlemen buyers.
According to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, currently, of the 7+million farmers 82% are producing primarily for household consumption rather than for as a Business to create wealth. They continue to do this despite Governments have for decades spent billions of dollars on various initiatives, advertising, and political motivational speeches, all to very little effect.
The core problem has never been addressed – the entrenched siphoning of smallholder meagre profits by middlemen buyers who control access to markets and all the information about price movements.
This is further supported by independent survey of smallholder farmers, that found 60+% were dependant on Buyers coming to their farms to buy their produce and another 30+% were dependent on word-of-mouth to get buyers.
The survey also revealed that 75% of smallholder farmers assumed that the prices of produce differences were only related to quantity not the quality of the produce. This level of ignorance gives the buyers unlimited bargaining power over the smallholder farmers and therefore continually strip them of any consistent profitability.
So, unless there is a significant disruptive change to the trading relationship between the smallholder farmers and the middlemen buyers to achieve an open and equitable playing field, there will be persistent profit siphoning by Buyers and impoverishment of smallholder farmers.
Current initiatives Government and even private institutional initiatives will continue to fail, however well intentioned because the farmers are still left largely powerless and voiceless in all solutions be implemented.
Farmyfarm Pty Ltd, through its Formyfarm app, has decided to deal with this ‘giant elephant in the farmlands’ by changing the very relationship on how farmers sell their produce and how Buyers get to buy their produce. This is a very significant disruption which will produce a powerful, ‘win-win’ for both the smallholder farmer and the buyer.
The app includes several significant innovations, that if strongly supported by both Government, large institutions of bulk buyers of farm produce, will cause an explosive growth in agricultural food production as farmers get to keep most of their profits, even earn much more, while at the same time the Buyer will discover to their amazement new sources of farm produce through fromyfarm app. The following are the key features of this transformative change agent.
The fromyfarm App Solution
Farmers can advertise their produce to be sold directly from their farms to the whole world. This is displayed in a map by district. The buyer can search for a particular produce and all registered farmers will be displayed, making it very easy to locate the nearest location of farmers the buyer can reach.
Once farmers have registered and uploaded photos or videos of their produce via the Internet, they can go off-line and will be supported by SMS messages informing them when any buyer submits a bid for their produce. Only then farmers must go online to Accept the buyers offer. After that, both the farmer and buyer will get SMS contact details for each other to discuss and finalise the sale and collection of the produce from the farm. Fromyfarm app is not involved.
Note: There are no obligations for either the Farmer to sell or Buyer to buy the produce except by final agreement. This ensures that both parties are satisfied with the final price and quality of the produce. Fromyfarm is not involved.
If they disagree, they will not proceed, and the farmer can re-advertise the produce on Fromyfarm app.
Using the farmer location map, buyers can also see what other farm produce each farmer is also offering giving them additional choices. (refer to the sample images below)
Farmers can set their minimum prices to ensure it is profitable for them and buyer cannot offer prices below that price.
Buyers must bid for farmer produce in competition with other buyers, and it is the farmer who will decide who will win that bid. This is radically different to the current practice where the farmers are price takers. For the first time farmers are price makers ensuring at the very least they will be profitable.
Both farmers and buyers will get real-time price and quantity movements that is occurring across the entire market for each type of produce. This level playing field for information means a much fairer bargaining position for farmers. There will also be price and quantity graphs to show movement over the previous 24hrs.
Suppliers of farm inputs are also very critical in meeting the needs of farmers to improve their productivity and education. These include transportation services and farming equipment, fertilizers, seeds, Training provides, banking, legal, accounting, and government agencies, etc. Formyfarm app provides shop fronts for suppliers to bring these services directly to farmers in the village. Farmers can search for suppliers using a suppliers map which will display all the suppliers by district for the inputs they need. Suppliers have the option to sell their products and services either through an auction or directly without an auction.
Star Ratings (1-5 Stars) and AI to combat fakes/bad business practices
Formyfarm app provides two levels of ratings. Star ratings enables users to provide their user experience about the App, but more importantly, their experiences with other counter-parties.
For example, farmers can give ratings on buyers and suppliers, but they cannot give ratings on other farmers to prevent anticompetitive behaviour. buyers can rate suppliers and farmers, but never other buyers, and suppliers can rate buyers and farmers but never other suppliers.
The second level of ratings is managed by an artificial intelligence which collects the rating data and comments from all users and determines if a particular user’s rating should be adjusted upwards or downwards. Importantly, if a user is a bad actor based on the collected ratings and comments by other participants, then they are automatically warned first and if they persist, they may be temporarily suspended, or their account closed. They will then have to justify to administration why they deserve to have their accounts re-opened.
A secure means of trading through fromyfarm App
To protect all customers of fromyfarm, especially rural smallholders farmers, most of whom are not Internet literate, Fromyfarm App is designed like a ‘Sand Box’ so that only registered users have access. There are no clickable Internet links permitted, so that users cannot be redirected away from Formyfarm app. All updates to the fromyfarm App will be via an official update release of the App that cannot be modified by a third-party and is securely managed. This approach is similar to how computer applications used to be distributed via a disk and installed as self-contained and non-updatable versions. Also, all database updates are only done through secure connections with the cloud-based server after the user has logged in and be authenticated.
In conclusion, if this highly disruptive empowerment of smallholder farmers through the smartphone, is strongly supported by government and the large scale buyers of farm produce, then real wealth will be transferred to the smallholder farmer. This will give them the savings and the knowledge that they have ready markets directly accessible for expansion of their production creating ever increasing wealth and poverty reduction is a sustained manner.
This video shows how the App contributes towards the Uganda Govt’s Digital Transformation Roadmap initiatives.
The writer is the CEO and Software architect of Farmyfarm Pty Ltd
