You don’t have to wield hoes and cutlasses nowadays to become a real farmer, all thanks to Farmcrowdy!
Farmcrowdy is Nigeria’s first digital agriculture platform – an agritech platform that connects real farmers to real sponsors, giving everyone the opportunity to participate in agriculture, with options to even select the kind of farms they would love to sponsor.
Founded in 2016 by Onyeka Akumah alongside co-founders Akindele Phillips, Tope Omotolani, Jimoh Maiyegun and Ifeanyi Anazodo, Farmcrowdy is revolutionizing the Nigerian agribusiness value chain by helping farmers secure funds, while using the acquired funds to secure land, train farmers, engage them, plant seeds, insure the farmers and farm produce, complete the full farming cycle, sell the harvest, and then pay the farm sponsors returns on their investment. While this is going on, sponsors are able to keep track of the activities on the farm in real time, getting updates in texts, pictures and videos. Check out the full app review here!
Farmers receive training and advice from agriculture experts on the best practices on the kinds of crops and best ways to get amazing production yields.
According to Onyeka Akumah, “What makes Farmcrowdy different from other platforms is it turns a complex problem into a digital marketplace.”
“We’re taking care of funding for farmers, training for farmers, providing the market for the farmers to sell. We’re taking care of the logistics to move farm harvests to the market and making sure farmers earn a decent return at the end of their cycle,” he said.
The platform screens smallholder farmers all through the country, while working with partners such as Syngenta and Africa’s International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, to shape sponsorship packages to provide them expertise.
Farmcrowdy’s revenue model operates on a split system. For sponsors, they receive their principal plus 40 percent revenue from the yield, 40 percent for the farmer and 20 percent for Farmcrowdy.
As at April 2018, Farmcrowdy has been able to attract over £1.6 million to the nation’s agricultural sector from Nigerians and investors in the diaspora, with 10,000 acres and 7,000 signed up farmers across 9 states.
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