Outline to go here based on Concept note draft
Putting some talking points on paper, these need to be organized into buckets and strung together in a coherent narrative. Note, I am using farmer group / FPO interchangeably and we should use something consistent that works across IND, ETH and KEN
Farmer groups, rather than individual smallholder farmers, are the right “unit” of operation given the diseconomies of scale that smallholders face. As a group, there is potential for increased bargaining power for both input purchases and output marketing and larger ticket size loans are possible which is good bc cost of servicing small borrowers is a challenge for lenders
Tremendous inefficiency bc each service provider that wants to work with a farmer group needs to go re-create the same foundational data sets: location and plot boundaries; farmer contact info (and perhaps banking details); crop grown, yield, inputs required, farming records/logs, etc
Bc its to expensive and laborious to capture this data, the service provider views it as their proprietary asset and it becomes siloed; the farmer groups cannot use it for their own benefit or to connect w other service providers. doesn’t share the info. Also, only large well capitalized service providers can invest resources to build this data asset which throttles innovation
We want to flip this paradigm and put farmer groups in a position where they can generate and maintain this data and then leverage it to realize value
There is a push to mobilize farmer producer orgs in India and cooperatives in general have been hugely successful in Agriculture. That said, reality is that these farmer groups are struggling and face lots of issues. Data alone won’t solve these problems but better data management and data literacy among farmer members can make engaging with service providers more efficient and its a role that DG is well suited to play (rather than being a trader or putting up warehouses and managing logistics)
Some of the oft-cited problems are:
Awareness and engagement level / sense of ownership of farmer group members.
Access to buyers
Access to capital
Facilitating sales and increasing the % of farmer members who sell through the FPO is probably the most direct path to increasing member engagement and demonstrating value of the farmer group