How 4-month-old Farmcrowdy digitalises agribusiness
Nigeria’s agribusiness is being digitalised by Farmcrowdy, an online platform co-founded by Onyeka Akumah, former vice president for marketing at Konga, in November 2016.
Farmcrowdy is an online platform that gives Nigerians the opportunity to invest in agriculture by selecting the kind of farms they want to sponsor.
Farmycrowdy pulls funds from investors and uses them to secure hectares of land. The firm then engages farmers; plants seeds; insures the farmers and farm produce; completes the full farming cycle, and sells the harvest. It then pays the investors returns on their investments.
While the farm process is on-going, sponsors or investors can keep track of the full-cycle by getting updates in text messages, pictures and videos.
“We have signed on up to 1,500 farmers,” Akumah said at the BusinessDay-organised Agribusiness &Food Summit held last Thursday.
“When we sponsor a farmer, the money an investor brings is not given to the farmer,” Akumah said.
The firm manages investors’ money and ensures farmers keep up with evolving developments and modern realities, he said.
According to him, farmers say what they need and the firm provides them.
“We go there (to the farms) and monitor what the farmer does. We have extension agents and hire supervisors to monitor the farm process,” he added.
On his LinkedIn, Akumah says Farmcrowdy is focused on empowering over 50,000 small-scale farmers to expand their operations, improving food security and engaging over two million African youths in agriculture.
Farmers or investors are asked to register on the firm’s website. Investors are asked to put their money on farms of their interest and are also put through farm metrics. Investors are told that they can get up to 25 percent return on investment (RoI).
“We approach community leaders to give us the farmers they can trust. We don’t just get into a community and sign off a farmer,” he explained.
“We monitor a farmer and provide the inputs. We educate them on the inputs needed on a hectare of land. We have partnerships with fertilizer producers. We also have partnerships with insurance companies to protect farmers from unforeseen circumstances,” he stated.
According to him, many farmers are not aware of modern practices that will enable them to do more, citing the case of a farmer in Edo State that does not know how to apply fertilizers.
Apart from Akumah, the start-up also has Eric Yong, Peter Grouev, Africanfarmer Mogaji, Akindele Phillips, Jimoh Maiyegun, and Tope Omotolani, among others, as team members.
ODINAKA ANUDU