Intro for NABARD and SFAC

Objective: Develop a one-pager that introduces FDN and can be shared w NABARD and SFAC in late Jan; our ask of them is to connect us with FPOs that will co-develop the solution and potentially secure some funding.

Context:

An FPO is a registered collective of a group of farmers, who come together for the purpose of leveraging economies of scale in the production and marketing of agricultural produce. It has been seen that farmers belonging to the FPOs are getting inputs at a lower price and higher realization for selling. As, farmers in FPOs can get organized, manage their affairs, collectively take up marketing and value addition, and shift from the informal sector to the formal, we have decided to take the FPO route as FDN’s entry point.

National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) is a wholly-owned Agri and Rural Finance Institution by the Govt of India and comes under the Ministry of Agriculture, while Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC) is an Autonomous Society promoted by the Ministry of Agriculture pioneer in organizing small and marginal farmers as Farmers Producers Organization/Farmers Producers Company (FPO/FPC) for endowing them with bargaining power and economies of scale.

Key Points

What is the problem that FDN is solving (focusing on the farmers themselves)? Anything that frames the problem in the bigger picture of the farmers' context to show the scale and timeliness/urgency of the problem would be helpful as well. Market level data, income loss to farmers, regional or country comparisons, etc.

• Right now, farmer data is collected in an ad hoc way which creates a bunch of problems:

  • Lack of transparency for farmers about what is being collected and why

  • Data is siloed and farmers cannot easily get visibility to what is captured in various places or pull things together to get a holistic picture

  • Redundancy; farmers need to re-collect data for every single use case (esp critical parameters like lat/long, plot boundaries, crops grown, yield, sales, etc.) which wastes time

  • There is no trust in accuracy of data collected which limits its utility

• Products and services could be more data driven which would make them more accessible, affordable, useful for farmers but this innovation is hampered by lack of digitization and/or inconsistent approach to data collection / storage / sharing. What are some products / services that farmers want access to that may be unlocked through improved digitization?

  • Access to capital: Basic underwriting info, sales receipts / purchase agreements

  • Access to buyers: provenance and traceability data, yield estimates

  • Price transparency

  • Targeted advisories

• Farmer groups like FPOs are especially well placed to play a critical role as collectors and stewards as their core functions like group buying for better prices on inputs and negotiating with buyers on behalf of a larger collective to realize better prices would be aided by this data

  • Currently, FPO members are pretty disengaged (low participation in sales, etc.) and improved communication and transparency between FPO leadership and their members could address this

  • Farmers don’t perceive what value FPOs are providing or that they are shareholders in a collective enterprise. Some participation in governance enabled by improved data management could help address this deficit

• Farmers are cash poor but data rich; well structured data could be monetized as a new revenue stream when its aggregated (this is less true for individual farmers) but right now there is no mechanism for this to happen

• See the Farmer Journey for a brief on what is possible with improved data collection and sharing

What is the FDN, and how is it a key part of the solution? Using more approachable, non-technical language, and again focusing on how the farmers will benefit from this solution.

• FDN wraps technology and capacity building in a model that puts farmers and places farmer interests first

• Protocols for farmers to easily / intuitively digitize and verify key information (eg, plot boundaries) to create trusted digital records

• Training on the technology and data literacy and the value of data

• Mechanisms to capture consent and share data in a controlled / transparent way

• See FDN Visualization for more

Why is DG best positioned to do this work? What is our history with these farmers, in this context, with this type of technical solution?

• Experience with NRLM demonstrates ability to partner with govt and work at scale

• Prior experience working w SHGs which can be a powerful launching pad for FPOs as it leverages existing local trust networks

• User centric tech development; deploy tech solutions in a manner that is inclusive and emphasizes usability (see video approach)

• Non profit whose mission is to support small scale producers; we are not an agribusiness for whom this data work is primarily to enable our own bottom line