By Pascal Oparada
FarmCrowdy, Nigeria’s first digital agriculture platform, is revolutionizing Farming in a way traditional farming does not. It is a platform that connects farmers to sponsors and landowners. It impacts the lives of the farmers directly.
According to the founder and chief executive officer of FarmCrowdy, Onyeka Akuma, a farm sponsor or farm follower goes on the platform, picks, for instance, a poultry farm and say he/she wants to sponsor a farmer. He selects a number of farm types and pays the money into the platform. The farmer is notified that he has a partner coming on board.
At the farmer’s end of the website, he or she can see the partner’s profile, and the partner is immediately connected with a key engagement officer of FarmCrowdy.
The farmer goes to work and does the entire cycle, depending on the various harvest seasons associated with each produce or farm product type. At harvest, the produce is mopped up and sold to off-takers who then pay into the platform.
The profit is shared among the stakeholders. Forty percent of the produce goes to the sponsor, including his original investment and another 40 percent to the farmer. FarmCrowdy keeps the 20 percent for its work.
The platform has connected about 40,000 farm sponsors and followers with farmers. It has sponsored over 5,000 farms. And over 3,000 farmers have been empowered through it.
On what inspired him to create the App, Akuma said it was his personal experience at venturing into agriculture. “I have also wanted to go into agriculture and in trying to do that, it was difficult to find people whom I wanted to work with.”
According to him, there are about 38 million farmers who had peculiar problems. Most of the farmers were considered unbankable and unable to access loans from the banks.
He said the farmers lacked technical know-how and smart farming techniques and found it difficult locating the right market to sell their produce.
“Small-scale farmers had problems selling their products and the buyers find it hard to locate products to buy,” Akuma said.
It takes FarmCrowdy to bring these two sets of people together where a sponsor comes through the platform and sponsors individual farm units on the platform. On the platform, the farmer gets the entire inputs he needs to go full cycle on the farm.
“FarmCrowdy is a community model that is driven by Nigerians sponsoring Nigerian farmers producing food for Nigerians to eat. Our goal is that in the next years we want to impact the lives of over 50,000 small-scale farmers. It is a tiny number compared to 38 million but that level of impact would resonate with others,” Akuma said.
Some of the App beneficiaries are already reeling with joy.
Blessing Raymond-Jacob, a farmer on FarmCrowdy “I said she started farming in 2017. “I was into palm oil business. I was buying oil from Calabar and sending to Lagos and at the same time, I joined Farm Guide, a cooperative in Ikot Ekpene. Then FarmCrowdy came in and worked with us and helped us improve on our farming,” she said.
Elsie Okpocha, a farm sponsor said she heard about FarmCrowdy through her sister and then she spoke to the founder who explained things to her and she became interested. Okpocha said she had sponsored about 35 farm units so far.
“The fact that the small-scale farmers are able to make a profit as well and eat, and I am able to provide job opportunities for people gives me joy,” Okpocha said.
Elizabeth Bassey-Bassey, a farmer on FarmCrowdy, said what she has achieved through the platform has empowered her.
For Patience Akpan, the platform has helped her sponsor her education in full. Akpan said she was able to save money which saw her through her university education.
Kehinde Adebiyi, a farm sponsor said: “I would recommend the platform to anybody that wants to touch lives, especially in the area of agriculture and make good returns on their sponsorship.”
For Elsie Okpocha, FarCrowdy is a good platform which provides a win-win for everyone on it.
“I get to benefit from it, the farmer gets to benefit from it and other stakeholders as well get to benefit from it,” Okpocha said.
