Agricultural Marketplace + Atala

A blockchain based digital agricultural marketplace, where parties directly buy produces from small holder farmers, cutting middlemen out.

Nathan Bogale, is a Solutions Architect and an Entrepreneur. Have designed & implemented the first digital agricultural platform in Ethiopia

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Purpose and Justification:

More than 97% of people deployed in agriculture live in developing regions, focusing on sub-Saharan countries, and agriculture contributes a significant proportion of the economy (16.2% of GDP).

80% of the population are smallholder farmers, and even though they need to access several markets, it's the middlemen that control the market by paying ridiculously low prices to buy products from farmers and sell them at extremely high prices. The lack of market access and access to finance keeps farmers from dealing with insecurity and volatility.

In some cases, smallholder farmers join forces and organize themselves into cooperatives. The power of numbers helps them to stand their ground, and to use their resources more efficiently.

The two types of middlemen:

Merchant Middlemen are such as dealers, wholesalers and retailers.

Fundamental Middlemen comprise of:

• Mercantile middlemen include brokers, commission agents, forwarding agents and clearing agents.
• Facilitating middlemen are those in, for example, banking, insurance, warehousing and transporting.

The Mercantile middlemen are the main problem this solution is trying to address.

Farmers are usually aware of the exploitation, but circumstances force them to be dependent on middlemen for marketing and credit services at whatever cost that is set by the middlemen.

Project Deliverables and Beneficiaries:

At the end of the project a cross border blockchain based digital agricultural market place will be delivered, where entities (Governments, Food processors, Breweries, Hotels, Restaurants...) can directly buy agricultural goods and produces straight from the smallholder farmer, cutting the middleman out and boosting overall economy

• Smallholder farmers will be able to register to the platform, be issued a digital identity and when their yield is due, they will be able to create a posting on the marketplace by providing the required information for the purchaser and make it open for the highest bidder.
• The purchasers, after having themselves onboarded to the platform, can browse through the listings, considering the crop type/strand, location, chemicals that have been used and other metrics and buy the one that suits their need after winning the open bid.

Besides the main future of farmer to buyer interaction, the following features will also be supported:

• Backward move: serving the farmer through leasing and/or rental of agriculture machinery and equipment.
• Agriculture insurance and/or procurement financing, happens when the buyer gives assurance to the farmer.
• Direct sales of agriculture inputs, machinery and replacement parts is possible, aside from crop and produces.
• B2B procurement of wholesale food, grocery and/or equipment marketplaces.
• B2C retail and distribution of food and equipment.
• Crowdfunding or financing for farmers.
• Farmers-to-farmers or farmers-to-restaurants/retailers networks.

Strategic Context:

Even though every government is against this way of working, putting out a law or a regulatory framework towards the middlemen will create disorder in a nationwide food market, that's why most government and agri ministries are closely spectating while encouraging these kinds of solutions when they appear.

Time Factors: for delivery and defining success
I have divided the project in to 3 phases:

Up to 3rd month - Initiation Phase

• Team and workstations setup
• Identify pilot deployment areas and carry out surveys
• Design an off chain MVP of the platform (Phase 1)
• Onboard potential partners (ex. Ministry of agriculture, Bulk buyers..)
• Set up a debriefing and integration planning workshop with the Atala Prism team

From the 3rd month to the 6th- Development and Stabilization Phase

• Team expansion and strategy refinement
• Set up a workshop with partners, stakeholders and beneficiaries, on roads travelled and future (First Round)
• Platform development kickoff
• Initialize Atala Prism Integration
• Set up second workshop with Atala Prism team, set up a recurrent technical call
• Finalize a working platform prototype (Phase 2)
• Training / Workshop for the pilot area farmers (Training 1)

From the 6rd month to the 12th - Pilot Rollout Phase

• Set up an outreach and promotion strategy
• Platform testing and quality assurance
• Product offline and USSD application expansion strategy
• Set up a workshop with partners, stakeholders and beneficiaries, on roads travelled and future (Second Round)
• Training / Workshop for the pilot area farmers (Training 2)
• Platform launch

Special Provisions:

Before the platform launches, the team needs to go down to the pilot areas and execute 2 training sessions. The first will be familiarization and onboarding of interested farmers, while the second training is a more practical and hands on training - based on the acclimatization of the farmers a 3rd training may be scheduled.

Related Projects:

Currently there are no related projects rather than supportive projects that can easily integrate with this platform. They will be studied and a strategic plan will be put out.

Project Assumptions and Constraints:

The solution heavily depends on Atala products.

Assumptions:

• At its core, the solution will be running Atala Prism as an SSI solution, to clearly create and issue DIDs for each member and utilizing the verifiable credentials to store information relating to the produces, farmland information and more, upon farmer registration and while a new bid posting has been created and added by the farmer.
• Its not the farmer only that can create bids, buyers can create create a bid to communicate to the market of what they are looking for, and will get rapid reactions from interested farmers or sellers.
• On the post sales side of things, the logistics phase will be integrated with Atala Trace, improving and handling the supply chain management within the platform, as logistics is an outsourced service.
• Up on delivery, the platform will be utilizing Atala Scan for verification of deliverables.

Constraints:

• It is important that the platform should be working normally under peak / harvesting seasons

Project Risks:

There is a risk that the middlemen (Brokers) may try to tamper with the system and overall workflow.

Project Expenses:

Implementation Expenses:

For phase one

• Includes initial team salary, workspace setup, workshops: this will cost the project $15,0000

For Phase Two

• Adding the new staff salary, workshops and an on ground farmer training will cost the project $40,000

For Phase Three

• Adding marketing and promotion, salary of added staff and on ground training phase three will cost the project $30,000

Post-implementation Expenses:

Tasks like external QA operation and media influencer partnership to boost public awareness will cost the project $5,000.00