Introducing digital solution in agriculture is not easy, why? Because as simple as it looks like, agriculture is one of the most sensitive sectors for any country and analysis is required to choose the right solution.
For any government in any country maintaining a food system for the local population is a top priority, food must be:
- available,
- affordable,
- healthy.
Agriculture is a capital intensive sector, renting or buying a farm is for deep pocketed individuals and companies, land is expensive. Agriculture is a big business yes but not only, it's a mater of stability too. A company can earn a lot of money in some niche luxury food that support local tourism, but it would not be sustainable if years of drought cause famine. On the other hand a small farmer may face problems if he specialize in affordable foods in a badly regulated market.
We can say that there is (2 agriculture sectors!), big farmers and small farmers.
Talking about agriculture is talking about rural areas, so you must take into consideration that :
- not all farm workers are literate,
- wages are low,
- workers can not afford a bank account,
- there is no bank branch nearby,
in this post we will see how startups are solving some problems in this valuable sector, their products include apps for :
BIG FARMS
- HR management
- Payroll
SMALL FARMERS
- Credit score
- Purchasing
Farms HR Software
In big farms, most of the time office manager and operations manager coordinate to insure HR operations, the process include activities like:
- hiring,
- on-boarding,
- training (covid-19 safety),
- time-tracking,
- compliance (personnel records,, form i-9, OSHA300/301, ...),
- communication.
The problem is the important number of employees in farms, it can easily raise to 100 workers in some seasons. This generate heavy paperwork and makes it a complicated process.
The need for digitization and automation is clear, HURVUST developed a solution that reduce pressure on people in-charge of those tasks, office managers can save time and spend it in other valuable activities.
On the 13 January 2021, the AFBF (american farm bureau federation) published a post on fb.org announcing HARVUST as the winner of 2021 AG INNOVATION CHALLENGE with $50k prize. It's a software platform that helps farmers successfully hire, train and communicate with employees.
Digital payroll for Farmers
In farms work is seasonal, they hire temporary worker for the pruning season and after that they hire for the harvest season for example, those seasons will last weeks. Farms are also labor intensive, a small farm may need a hundred workers in some season. For farm mangers, payroll is a heavy administrative task.
On the 22 April 2021, the simon fraser university published an article announcing LABORA CONSULTING SERVICES CORP as the coast capital savings venture prize competition top prize winner with a 35,000CAD prize package, LABORA provides a simple and digital payroll service to farmers enabling their seasonal agricultural workers to transfer remittances back home. A better solution for farm owners and workers.
LABORA provide solution for electronic payroll, tax returns filling, direct deposit to mexican bank accounts using online messaging service in Spanish.
LABORA is not only an HR tech company, it's also a fin-tech company registered as an MSB with FINTRAC.
what about small farmers, they certainly do not think about HR software because they do not have employees. They are more interested in small loans.
Small farmers credit score
On the 27 May 2021, CAPAPULT: INCLUSION AFRICA twitted EMATA as the first place winner of 2021 award. EMATA is an alternative credit scoring and machine learning that offer farmers affordable digital loans.
According to catapult.lu EMATA is helping farmers cooperatives by giving them access to digital tools, the mobile app allow:
- data aggregation,
- data analytics,
- risk analytics,
EMATA has a microfinance license in Uganda, They serve co-operatives and small farmers. There main goal is to have a better decision making by using a data-driven process, this reduce risks and allow them to offer affordable loans.
Loans, data and a marketplace on the same app
On the 26 May 2021 CARTIER WOMEN'S INITIATIVE twitted VERQOR as the 2021 laureate for Latin america & the Caribbean, An other concept that came from MEXICO, it's a company giving data-based cashless credits to financially excluded smallholder farmers in mexico, which they can use to buy agricultural supplies on VERQOR's platform.
VERQOR solution is simple and logical, it connect the supply chain actors like: farmers, crop purchasers, financial institutions and agricultural supplies providers. The data shared with those supply chain actors through the app allow small farmers to have a credit score with which they can buy supplies in the VERQOR app.
We did not test the VERQOR app but the idea of cashless purchase is interesting because it will allow the app to have more features :
- data
- loans
- marketplace
at the same time.
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