From starting with two farmers in 2016 and growing to 300,000 farmers in 2020 across eight states, Farmcrowdy, an agricultural technology and crowd-funding platform is celebrating its fourth anniversary, aiming to grow the number of farmers it would have worked with by 2021 to 500,000 farmers.
To mark its fourth anniversary, the company announced the launch of what it calls the Farmcrowdy 3.0, which has six business divisions covering technology and data; insurance; aggregation; marketing; foods and; structured finance.
Highlighting its successes so far, Onyeka Akumah, the company’s CEO said after a major setback, in the beginning, the startup decided to become more actively involved in the cultivation and production process. This culminated in cultivating 5,000 acres of maize in Kaduna, 2,000 acres of rice in Kwara and 1,250 acres of cassava in Akwa Ibom as well as over 1.2 million chickens and it has since then, continued to take giant and innovative strides.
According to Akuma, Farmcrowdy has over the years increased farmers’ incomes by 80 percent, partnered with various organizations, and generated over $1.9 million in sponsorships. He also said the company is currently working with over 3,000 small scale farmers across different states in the country.
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“We are committed to expanding our reach in order to continue to empower local farmers, positively impact their lives and their families while boosting food production and sustainability in Nigeria,” he said.
He explained that over 38 million small-scale farmers face challenges in their operations, with 90 percent struggling with market accessibility and this in part why Nigeria records very high post-harvest losses annually, estimated at N3.42 trillion. This he says was a critical part of the decision to launch Farmcrowdy 3.0 to provide solutions to these challenges.
“I am so excited about farmcrowdy 3.0 because now we are using technology to not just connect the farmers in our network, we are looking at how we will get three million farmers within a short while within our platform benefitting from Farmcrowdy 3.0,” he said.
“Each of these businesses under Farmcrowdy 3.0 is revenue generators on their own with each having its own managerial officers and digitalized projects like the aggregation and foods division have the Farmcrowdy trader platform and the Farmcrowdy foods platform respectively,” Akumah added.
The Tech and data division aims to reform the agriculture space in line with global trends using technology, data analytics, research and market predictions which will also help farmers make informed decisions.
FC aggregation will provide a tech-enabled connection between farmers and large-scale buyers, already it has 101 commissioned aggregation centers with a minimum commodity aggregation capacity of 12 thousand metric tonnes. Similarly, FC foods connect farmers’ produce to end consumers using technology and have generated $33,000 since it commenced operations
Structured finance aims to equip farmers with capital while the Insurance arm offers insurance services to farmers with a minimum of N100 monthly. The marketing division aims to provide marketing solutions, with expertise in public relations, digital marketing, etc.
The group company, which was renamed Emfato holdings from Crowdyvest holdings earlier in July has three major operations namely Crowdyvest, an investment and savings platform, Plentywaka, which is a transport platform and Farmcrowdy, which is centred on diverse agricultural activities.
