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
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.
Processing equipment for value addition (rice, pulses, cashew as we heard with Jattu etc.)
Stuff related to drying / managing moisture levels / storage like Drycards, Mechanical dryers, hermetic bags
Equipment that promotes climate smart agriculture (eg, Zero tillage machines / happy seeders). This report has a long list and here the NFT might also track estimated tons of GHG emissions avoided which could be further monetized