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  • There is equipment that can deliver significant farmer impact in terms of productivity, climate resilience (and even mitigation), reducing losses, increased realization through value addition, etc.

  • A farmer group might be a logical aggregation point to take ownership of equipment themselves or could generate sufficient local demand from across its members to incentivize a local service provider to start a service business around such equipment.

  • Farmer groups would create a compelling member value prop by unlocking access to this equipment at discounted rates

  • There are existing programs that subsidize the cost of such equipment like India’s Agri Infra Fund (reference) and if we pooled a bunch of purchases, this could be a compelling product for donors to support given the potential impact. Funding could be combination of both things (ie, apply for the Agri-infra subsidy and augment w private donation which could come in sooner)

  • Imagine a flow somewhat along these lines:

    • Farmer groups post their equipment requirements

    • DG helps aggregate requirements, packages this up into a pitch for donors (and we may even fund a portion of it depending on the size). Could imagine a crowdfunding sort of interface over-time

    • The fundraise would cover [75%] of the cost of acquisition (bc need farmer group to have some skin in the game) along with [50%] of expected operating / service costs for the next 3 years at which point farmer group needs to maintain on their own

    • Target individual “retail” donors and a couple innovative philanthropies as anchors

    • Each piece of equipment has an NFT which is a digital twin and usage / impact metrics are attached to the NFT. This gives the donors something tangible in return for their contribution.

      • This might create a totally new and interesting fundraising channel

      • Conceptually, I think an NFT creates a cool separation btwn the physical asset, which is valuable to the farmers, and information about the asset (eg, the NFT) which is valuable to other stakeholders

      • The NFT will contain info about the physical asset like usage which could be translated to impact metrics. What this could do is unlock a trading market for the NFT where investors/donors pay up as the NFT / physical asset has more utilization (and the farmer group could attach other intangible stuff to the NFT to make it more compelling)

      • Farmer groups could participate in this upside via a smart contract that gives them a portion of the increase in value upon every trade; this creates incentive to share more data which is captured in the NFT

    • Also becomes a hook for digitization as continued usage and reporting is required to unlock future disbursements

    • Over-time this could start to look like a decentralized financing marketplace where farmers can avail access to capital for value-creating assets from a global community; could even open up to debt/blended finance rather than only grants to expand the pool of available capital

  • Some equipment to consider by category. To reduce complexity, maybe start with a couple high impact products with high demand, high cost but low complexity from an operations/servicing perspective and with high productivity and climate benefits as I think that combo would sell well to donors:

    • Cold chain: Storage for horticulture. Reduces wastage and potentially helps to avoid distressed selling

    • Multi-crop Threshers. See this presentation as a reference.

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