Crypto/ Web3 centric ideas: FPOs/ Farmers
- Vineet Singh
Idea 1: Data entry KisanCoin (KC)
Problem:
Ecosystem actors( ag companies, government, research orgs etc)
No accurate data about farmers leads to lack of actionable intelligence
Cost of working with farmers and FPOs directly
FPOs
Lack clear incentives make it difficult to curate member farmers' info
Difficult to train farmers to self-enter information
Farmers
Lack of incentives
Not digital savvy and suspicion
Solution:
Business sketch:
Product offering:
A data entry tool that can be embedded in the apps operated by farmers or curators with an intuitive interface
A discovery web app for agriculture companies for which they pay subscription giving them access to aggregated data, make offers and rate farmers/ farmer groups
Incentivise using KisanCoins (KC):
What is KisanCoin?
A reward mechanism for farmers to monetise their data
KC gives me a right to sell data on the network
KC also indicates the stake I have in the network
Value of KC is market driven
KC is not a currency which can be used to buy stuff outside network
KC help activate features in data collective and get dividend
KC is “transferrable”
KC has payload associated with it (data entered about the farm and farming by the farmer)
Who can get KisanCoin?
Farmers
Curators
How will farmers earn KisanCoin?
The coins are earned for each piece of information entered
There are two categories of information: static/ slow changing and seasonal
Farmers get fixed amount called as base KC (b amount of KC) for each set of information, for example, contact details have name, phone, village, block, district - if all the entries are made the farmer gets b and then there are land details for the farm(s) he/she owns (farm boundary, etc) will give another b coins
Farmers can get at most X coins for every season if they enter all information which can again be categorised like seed details, chemical details, land preparation details and so on
The previous season’s KC will be halved (if not used) creating more rewards for more recent information but not losing the rewards that were entered earlier, for example: if a farmer enters for last four seasons the complete farming activity information the total tokens would be X(1+0.5+0.25+0.125) = 1.75X
The coins are doubled (minus some percentage) for each verification, example, a farmer has X coins and gets it verified by paying verification charges (V)
The total number of coins that a farmer can have from his/her farm(s) will be n*b + 2X - V, assuming n sets of information that make up complete static information (for further analysis let’s say B = n*b)
A farmer can earn coins by verifying other farmer’s information (V)
A farmer gets some reward coins for contributing to the data pool (R)
A positive rating and feedback can earn (F)
How will curators earn KisanCoin?
A curator helps farmer enter details and get C coins
A curator can also verify farmer data and get V coins
Transactions of KC:
Burn KC to get FIAT money
Transfer data for payment in fiat currency where some percentage of KC associated with that data
Every subscription for aggregate data will burn some percentage of KC associated with the member
Transfer KC
Can a farmer buy KC from another farmer there? - to be answered
This is to provide a way for the farmers in a geography or crop where there are not many institutional buyers to sell their KC to other farmers who might be interested
To answer - once KC is transferred, what happens with the data and should the KCs earned by entering static data should not be transferable?
Idea 2: Liquidity pool using INRT (local stablecoin)
Problem
Access to working capital for FPO and also farmers
Farmers and therefore FPO as well are credit invisible
Credit assessment or risk models don’t exist
No prior information to create new models
Cost of capital high (interest rates high)
Because lack of access to formal financing options
High risk associated with agriculture business
lack of transparency and business plan
Assumptions
Conventional financial organisations will never deal directly in cryptocurrencies/ tokens
Farmers won’t understand decentralisation concepts and won’t be able to participate in native crypto currencies like bitcoin (like putting resources to do mining to ear bitcoin)
There are investors around the world in crypto space who would want to invest in a philanthropic plus less risky return
Solution
Summary
A decentralised finance system where investors in crypto can create a pool using stable coin of the corresponding fiat currency in the jurisdiction. The investors can see the ratings and reviews of the farmer group before creating a pool and repayment history. The farmers can access from liquidity pool the money equivalent to the fiat currency like INR by paying some transaction charges and not interest. The disbursal of money is done as per the stage of farming and requirement. The farmer group should ensure that the money is deposited back in the end of the season, it's a group responsibility, that is, even if one farmer fails the other farmer can help him/her so as to ensure the group rating is good for subsequent seasons.
Basics
INRT is a stable coin which is always equal to INR
It can be used by people to pay just like INR but through the app not involving any bank or anything
The FPO or any farmer group can create a requirement of liquidity pool (money that they need as working capital) and they can get in INR from INRT on an exchange and vice versa
The FPO should have basic details of member farmers' data (non personal) like number of farmers, total area, crops sown, crops for self consumption, projected crop for sale, previous season’s details and repayment history etc
Investor story
Alice is a user in crypto world and she has 10 Ethers which are currently valued as 10000 USD at 1000 USD each, she sees a philanthropic drive which helps farmers in India with some returns (not very high but something that is not risky and decent return she can’t get easily in US)
Alice converts her Ether as a collateral to get some INRT (let’s say 1 USD = 75 INR, so a total of 750000 INRT, she gets 700000 INRT and rest is kept)
Bob gets referred and commit 5 more ethers and so on
The FPO or any farmer group gets INRT in their account
The way liquidity pool works is that the INRT is given without interest but transaction fee is charged for every transaction which is minimal and the amount is disbursed at specific time for specific activity. For example, a farmer needs INR 10000 for buying seeds, he/she takes that amount by paying INR 100 as transaction fee. Next he needs 30000 for labour, he/she takes that amount from the liquidity pool by paying INR 100 as transaction fee and so on. When they return the money they pay 100 ruppe as transaction again
The transaction charges go as the return to Alice along with the amount whenever is given back, so she gets her 700000 plus lets 300*100= 30000 for 300 transactions done
Alice goes back after six months, convert 700000 INRT to 10 ethers which had probably shot up to 1100 USD and she earned ~ 5 % extra return
Idea 3: Coordinate to a common goal through FarmerHeroCoin (FHC)
Problem
Current ways of solving globally relevant problems are not as fast as they should thereby ever increasing gap of what needs to be addressed and what has been addressed.
How can internet users help farmers get incentives to be able to achieve a common goal that affects everyone like adoption of climate smart practice or natural farming?
Solution
Summary
DG creates a FarmerHero.network which issues FarmerHeroCoins (FHC) to the backers. The value of FHC is governed by what is a called a bonding curve (more to it later) which ensures the value of the token is going to increase as more people back it and for any amount of FHC in the circulation there is a ceiling and floor of the value that can be obtained. 50 % of FHC will be dedicated towards promoting climate smart practice or similar environmentally sustainable farming methods and anyone who is able to prove gets THC. This creates incentive directly for farmers. There is also incentive for curators who curate information about the topics, let’s say statistic or Key trends and so on.
Example of how it works
Let’s say value of FHC to ether is as per a mathematical function that has the value that 1 Ether = 1000 FHC, 2 Ether = 1900 FHC, 3 Ether = 2700 FHC, 4 Ether = 3400 FHC, 5 Ether = 4000 FHC
At any given point of time it is decided that 50% FHC can be used for backing the actual farmers who are adopting climate smart practices
DG starts the pool and put in 1 Ether and gets 1000 FHC
Alice in US likes it and puts 1 more Ether and gets 900 FHC
Bjorg in Finland likes it and puts 1 more Ether and gets 800 FHC
Total FHC in circulation = 1000+900+800 = 2700 FHC
1350 FHC is available for backing climate smart practices and every acre fetches a farmer 10 FHC
The payment is made directly to the farmers and if FHC is removed the value of FHC decreases with farmer getting (10/2700)*3 Ethers = 1/90 Ether to USD
With time, more backers, philanthropists, social organisations come to know and contribute increasing the value of FHC that DG has put in originally and anyone who was the early backer of the project
Chetna is a statistician in India and closely follows the project and realises that since there is nobody coordinating centrally leading to a big mess of information from all places while there is a strong demand in the community discussion to get more information
Chetna creates a curation market of stats information in the FHC.Statistic and stakes 20 FHC
Alice and Bjorg like that and further stake 10 FHC each for the topic and Alice likes Chetna’s credentials and stakes her 10 FHC to Chetna
Chetna, therefore, has 30 out of 40 FHC on this topic implying she can curate, upvote an information and her vote will weigh 75 % (30/40) initially
As the topic grows, more people start backing topic as well as her and more experts also join along using which they can upvote sub topics and create network bounties
In time the statistic topic has total of 1000 FHC and Chetna has 100 FHC staked which means 10% influence
There is a research organisation working with farmers who see the value in some insights for example, XYZ crop with ABC crop leads to higher growth
The organisation member creates a sub-topic and mark it as task payable in FHC and defines how this needs to be evaluated, associated data required etc
The organisation hard codes that once the solution is obtained x % will go to the data owners, y % to seed curator (who posts the information), z % to relevant backers who verify, s % to analysts and so on
Using this the community earns FHC tokens to achieve common goal and the FHC tokens can be exchanged for actual money
Curation market diagram below: