AGRA

May 25, 2021: CropIn and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) have partnered in a new program that seeks to increase the access to extension services by farmers in Africa. AGRA works with governments, private sector companies and other organizations to bring knowledge and extension services to farmers throughthe use of self-employed Village-Based Advisors (VBAs).

In the new partnership, CropIn and AGRA will select and train 10,626 entrepreneurial VBAs to reach three million farmers in Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Tanzania and Mozambique. The VBAs will facilitate the training of farmers through ‘mother and baby’ demonstrations – where ‘mother’ is a demonstration site and ‘baby’ is the farmer’s own plot. Regular performance comparisons of the ‘mother and baby’ plots will be made to assess the quality of training received by farmers.

CropIn, an artificial intelligence (AI) led Software as a Service (SaaS) based agritech organization, will also offer a centralized digitalization platform that will be accessed by AGRA, its implementation partners and VBAs for a comprehensive review of farmer engagements. SaaS is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. The platform will generate farmer scores based on the historical performance of their plots and other socio-economic factors, enabling CropIn and AGRA to make appropriate adjustments in their support. Additionally, the digitalization of VBA activity will enhance their linkages with other service providers to increase their capacity for the last-mile delivery of agricultural inputs and services.

CropIn’s Chief Revenue Officer, Jitesh Shah, said:“In these unprecedented times, VBAs have restricted movement, and are unable to train farmers in gatherings of more than 2-10 persons. There is, therefore, a critical need to improve on a digital extension to ensure that farmers continue to gain access to information, and the inputs they need to sustainably increase productivity and income. Knowledge dissemination and advisory services to farmers via VBAs will be provided through the digital platform by the remotely-placed agronomists. Advisories provided will be on sustainable farming practices, pest and disease outbreak, weather forecast, and more. We expect to see significant growth in this sector once our solutions are implemented”.

AGRA’s Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, Vanessa Adams, added “There has not been a time when extension and related agribusiness services have been needed more than now. Amidst new challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic related market volatility, locust attacks, and the growing effects of climate change, farmers in Africa need all the support available to build resilient and highly productive agricultural systems. Thankfully, we are now able to scale up digital technologies to work around some of the accessibility limitations to sustain impactful interactions linking farmers to agro-dealers and markets across the continent. We see this partnership with CropIn as one of many critical COVID responses to strengthen the VBAs and their farmer services support towards improved livelihoods. This is a learning initiative as well, where the data generated will be critical in informing future plans for last mile development.”

Public sector-driven extension systems in most African countries have been severely weakened by poor logistical support, inadequate training of personnel at local levels and a lack of access to agricultural technologies by farmers. As a result, the extension worker to farmer ratio in most African countries is currently 1:3500 (with many countries reaching 1:10,000) against the recommended 1:400.

The skewed ratio, lack of knowledge on advanced technology and infrastructural lapses pose a huge problem for most farmers, who must travel distances of up to 20km to access farm inputs and extension services even during the best of times. In the pandemic era, compounded by climate shocks, this situation is worsened during COVID-19 by the restriction of physical movement for farmers, agricultural service providers and traders. It is such challenges that informed AGRA’s decision to focus on the development of private sector extension networks as a critical enabler towards inclusive agricultural transformation.

About CropIn

CropIn is a leading global AI-driven agtech​ organization that provides SaaS and data solutions to ag-enterprises globally. The company enables businesses in the agriculture ecosystem to adopt a data-driven approach through its ground-to-cloud technology solutions. CropIn’s unique suite of platforms enable various stakeholders to adopt and drive digital strategy across their crop value-chains and operations. The company empowers the ag-enterprises with data insights that help drive initiatives around Digitization, Predictability, Traceability, Financial Inclusion, Climate Smart Agriculture and Sustainability. CropIn has so far positively impacted 13 million acres of farmland and 4 million farmers across 52+ countries.

About AGRA

Established in 2006, AGRA is an African-led and Africa-based institution that puts smallholder farmers at the center of the continent’s growing economy by transforming agriculture from a solitary struggle to survive into farming as a business that thrives. Together with our partners, we catalyse and sustain inclusive agriculture transformation to increase the incomes and improve food security for 30 million farming households in 11 African countries by 2021. More info: www.agra.org

Partnership for Inclusive Agricultural Transformation in Africa (PIATA)

PIATA is a unique strategic partnership launched in 2017 that enables African agriculture actors to do business differently as they support leaders to drive an inclusive agricultural transformation. The innovative partnership is driving integrated delivery within agro-economic zones and across value chains, enhanced in-country coordination to leverage wider investments and deliberate engagement with the private sector to build sustainable systems that will transition agriculture from subsistence into a business that works.  More info: www.agra.org/piata/

Media Contacts:

Jyoti Vaddi, Director of Marketing, CropIn

jyoti@cropin.com, +91-9177433078

Rebecca Weaver, Acting Head of Communications, AGRA, rweaver@agra.org