BLR Meeting Plan Sep 12/13

What is success for Sep 12 + 13? What do we want to get out of our time together?

• Plot two real FO journeys (perhaps at two extremes of nascent and mature, high-value vs mixed commodities) in concrete/specific terms over the course of a calendar year to identify what are are areas what the advisory, capital, and data touchpoints could be.

• Plan for Sep-end/early-Oct meetings with Rikin, Saureen, Kebede, Beza, Hawinet, Henry, and Hillary to align on more convergent direction of FO-focused advisory+capital+data.

  • Maybe could visit one of the FOs from above for those of us less familiar as a part of this meeting to bring things to life?

• Roles and responsibilities w.r.t. product vis-a-vis program vis-a-vis strategy as well as decision-making, meeting, and documentation etiquette to ensure we’re in sync with overall design while having open channels for communication & learning from each other and the field from R&D design, operationalization, and decision-making (e.g., for the planned visit in Sep-end/early-Oct, could we start of product oriented folks?)

  • Should we separate FarmStack vs. D2FO/funding platform vs. video/WhatsApp extension work, or could we move to a more convergent team structure in line with our integrated advisory + funding + data strategy too?

Agenda

Some questions:

• What is our larger vision? Are we all aligned on this?

  • “Our 2022-2025 strategy lays the foundation for the future state we envision: the creation of Digital Farmer Networks (DFNs), which ensure that farmer groups have agency over their data and can drive their own digitization efforts in order to deliver the most value for their members. As DFNs thrive, farmers realize multiple benefits: digital connectivity strengthens the value and confidence of local farming communities; individual farmers have control over the nature and use of their information; and farmer groups can easily use member data to access better services, new income streams, and greater power within the agricultural system. Digital Green’s digital tools and thought leadership are intended to invite other key players into this systems-level effort to benefit farmers’ resilience and success. The technology solutions that we develop are open source, co-designed with farmers themselves, and built so that farmers maintain control over their valuable and increasingly sought-after data.”

• What do we want to do from Oct through Dec?

  • How many FPOs do we want to be actively working with? Which entry points do we want to prioritize?

  • Fund collective assets for Annapurna (Jattu) and Girivikasam (Velugu); for future pilots help FPO unlock govt grants and subsidized commercial capital and our financial investment goes towards member incentives and human capital (eg, data officer)

  • With each FPO, 6 month collaboration with clear objectives, aligned to FPO biz plan and defined roles + responsibilities for FPO, DG and Resource Institution

• FPO selection:

  • Is there a profile of FPO we want to focus on? Some considerations:

    • # of shareholders, % of women shareholders, % of women BOD members, annual turnover, quality of resource institution, location (SRLM support, easy access for DG team for regular checkins), household income of shareholders (and % from agriculture vs others)

  • Do we want to focus on specific value chains? Do we pilot with a variety of FPOs over the next six months to one year and then hone in?

  • Pipeline opportunities

    • Daru / JSLPS

    • Megha / SEWA

    • SSRPD in Karnataka about 20 FPCs-Central govt scheme)

    • IDF; 30 FPCs with different stages of maturity + Finance inclusion program

• “Entry points.” Which of the activities below do we want to pilot as we work with FPOs? Need to prioritize and sequence which of these we take on.

  • Recruit and train a data officer. What are their role and responsibilities?

  • Shareholder register and member profiles

  • Digitize the input business

  • Share data with off-takers (eg, tomato heatmap)

  • Compliance docs

  • Send targeted advisory messages to FPO members

  • Apply for grants and loans. What are the subsidized govt grant programs in AP, Odisha (eg, Mission Shakti), Jharkhand; detail eligibility requirements, create awareness and help apply?

• How we work: Currently, there is a weekly checkin w Ravi, Sai, Amrita and Ashok. Should we loop in Gautam and Vineet? Others? Can we do a better job of establishing two week sprint goals and sharing those broadly so everyone has visibility?

• When we met in Khopoli in late May, we discussed bringing a bunch of stakeholders together for a pledge akin to RE100 commitment at Climate Corp: which I thought was a cool idea. Do we want to revisit this?

  • “we pledge to empower farmer organizations to improve their livelihoods through data and digitization”

    • informed consent

    • secure data sharing

    • audit trail

    • interoperability

    • data ownership

    • data localization

    • transparency