Farmcrowdy, the country’s first digital agriculture firm, has merged its subsidiaries – Farmgate Africa and Agricsquare. The firms will now be referred to as Farmcrowdy.
In a statement, company said sponsorships available in the subsidiaries’platforms would reflect on the Farmcrowdy platform.
It explained that sponsorship options, such as beef processing, ginger farms, cattle farms, and poultry farms previously only available via Farmgate Africa and Farmcrowdy will now be open to sponsorship on the Farmcrowdy platform.
The statement, noted, that Agricsquare will, however, continue to be run as a product of Farmcrowdy – the largest community of agriculture enthusiasts in the country with over 20,000 people engaging daily to discuss agriculture-related topics.
In addition, the statement added that the Managing Director, Farmgate Africa, Kenneth Obiajulu, would oversee the trading aspect of the new entity and Temitope Omotolani, Chief Operations Officer for Farmcrowdy, would continue to oversee the production segment (Crop production, feedlot production, etc) of the company.
According to Farmcrowdy Founder and CEO, Onyeka Akumah, this process had been in the plan to attract more talents, expand the company’s reach in the agriculture value chain and provide more options for sponsors on its platform.
As a company, Farmcrowdy is operates in 14 states and has signed up over 25,000 farmers into its programmes who have cultivated over 16,000 acres of farmland. Recently, Farmcrowdy partnered Livestock247, an online livestock marketplace and Best Foods Livestock and Poultry Limited, a leading name in the livestock and seafood processing industry in the country to grow its livestock chain.
He said the new Farmcrowdy would be looking for new partnerships to continue to grow more crops as it targets expansion into four new states and increasing its supply of over 50 cows fit for slaughter per day to a supply of 100 cows per day.
Farmcrowdy, Nigeria’s first and leading digital agriculture platform on Friday won the Digital Business of the Year (2018) award in Africa.
The award was granted at the annual Global African Business Awards (GABA) ceremony in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Launched in 2017, GABA, the world’s premier annual business award was created to celebrate, honour and generate public recognition of the achievements and positive contributions of organizations and working professionals in the continent of Africa.
Other nominees of the Digital Business of the Year award include e-commerce platforms – Konga, Jumia, Zando, Dressmeoutlet, Mall for Africa and Dealdey; WeFarm, the world’s largest farmer-to-farmer digital network; Interswitch payment gateway; and Delvv.io, South Africa’s branding and refinement partners.
Onyeka Akumah, Founder and CEO of Farmcrowdy says, “we are honoured to have our hard work aimed at impacting on the lives of rural farmers recognised. We are delighted about the great opportunities ahead of us as we continually strive to remain at the forefront of technological innovation in Agriculture across Nigeria and eventually the continent of Africa.”
With a team of 35, Farmcrowdy has, in the last 20 months, empowered over 7,000 direct and indirect rural farmers and given thousands of farm sponsors a platform to participate in Agriculture from their computers or mobile phones in order to make profit at harvest. This impact has seen the platform plant Maize, Rice and Cassava on over 8,000 Acres of farmland in less than 2 years and raised close to 600,000 chickens to boost food production in the country.
The leading digital agriculture platform has also raised $1.4 million dollars in seed funding from local and international investors including Cox Enterprises, Social Capital, Techstars Ventures and most recently, won a grant from the GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator Innovator Fund.
So far, the funds have given the leading startup the potency to scale its operations to 10 states of operation in Nigeria with plans for more expansion across more states and regions.
There are so many factors that are unpredictable: Weather, biological factors, labour, market price, off-takers and so on.
That said, the agriculture business is also rewarding, and there is nothing as satisfying as growing food for people to eat, not to mention that the agric sector in Nigeria is very profitable.
If you would love to be a farmer regardless, there is a platform that will make it easier, faster and help you start farming profitably in less than 5 mins.
Farmcrowdy has also won several awardsincluding Agro-innovator of the Year 2017 and Agritech platform of the year 2017 by the Nigeria Technology Awards. They were also selected as one of the 2017 Business Day’s Top 25 Most Innovative Companies and have been featured in The Rockefeller Foundation Food Loss and Waste Africa Report.
Farmcrowdy works by creating a platform where individuals can securely sponsor farms online. Their sponsorship then goes to a rural farmer who uses this fund to start and complete a farm cycle.
At the end of the farm cycle, sponsors get back their initial sponsorship and returns on their sponsorship. The returns a farm sponsor gets depends on the type of farm sponsored and the returns on sponsorship.
Example 1, the maize farm has a farm cycle of 10 months, cost N95,000 with a 12% returns on sponsorship.
If 10 maize farms are sponsored, that means:
Initial sponsorship = N950,000
Returns after harvest = N114,000
Total = N1,064,000
Example 2, the rice farm has a farm cycle of 9 months, cost N90,000 with a 15% returns on sponsorship.
Farmcrowdy is bridging the gap between farmers who have no capital to cultivate farmland with farm sponsors who are passionate about influencing the Nigerian agricultural space and making profit while at it.
In one short year, Farmcrowdy has already worked with over 1,000 sponsors to sponsor 3000+ farmers, and they have a huge goal to empower 50,000 rural farmers by 2022. This goal can only be achieved if other individuals buy into the vision of increasing food production in Nigeria, and that’s evident when farms are being sponsored.
The Vice President also recently recognized their efforts in the agric sector by paying them a visit at their officeas a part of his tech tour and in a speech at the Harvard Business School earlier this year, where he cited Farmcrowdy as one of the startups pioneering groundbreaking innovation in agriculture. He even went ahead to sponsor farms on Farmcrowdy!
The first digital agriculture platform in Nigeria, Farmcrowdy, with focus on giving people the opportunity to invest in agriculture, recently celebrated its first year of launching in Nigeria.
Speaking at the venue in Lagos, Onyeka Akumah, the Chief Executive Officer/Co-founder of Farmcrowdy noted that the idea is to connect farmers with sponsors, thereby increasing the number of lives impacted by the partnership.
According to Akumah, the organisation uses its platform to attract funds from sponsors who cannot do the farming themselves in order to empower farmers, boost food production and aid food sufficiency in the country.
“With our platform, we have been able to bridge these gaps by connecting people, who are interested in agriculture but lack the skill and time, to actually fund credible farmers. With the newly launched App which is currently on Google Play Store, it is even easier for investors to monitor farms they invested in.
“Even without being an investor, everyone can benefit from the App through information from experts on how to manage a backyard farm, as well as to monitor farms before deciding to sponsor any. It gives information on agriculture generally.”
“On expansion, we hope to extend to other countries but right now we want to empower Nigerians to produce Nigerian foods for Nigerians to eat. Later, it will be to empower Ghanaians to produce Ghanaian food for Ghanaians to eat, and so on across the continent,” he noted.
On his part, a former Managing Director of Bank of Industry (BoI), Mr Rasheed Olaoluwa, urged the federal government to grant tax holidays to agro-tech companies to encourage their growth.
Olaoluwa urged the government to give tax incentives to emerging sectors such as agro-tech platforms to encourage their pioneering role in developing the agriculture sector.
“Within one year of operation, they have impacted over 1000 farmers directly, if you add the farmers’ wives and children, that is over 5000 people. “If they are able to impact 1000 at this size, you are talking about impacting millions of lives as they grow. This is the type of start-up and business that government should be trying to encourage in order to have more participation and jobs in the agriculture space,” Olaoluwa noted.
Mr Godwin Ejeh, the Supply Chain Manager, Syngenta, said that his company was in Nigeria to assist farmers with innovative crop solutions that would transform crop production to enrich farmers.
The initiative which started from a single farmland in Oyo state, Nigeria with about 5000 day-old chicks, now boasts of over 4000 farmers across eight states of the federation.
The first Digital Agriculture Platform in Nigeria, Farmcrowdy, with focus on giving people the opportunity to invest in Agriculture, recently celebrated its first year of launching in Nigeria.
The initiative which started from a single farmland in Oyo state, Nigeria with about 5000 day-old chicks, now boasts of over 4000 farmers across eight states of the federation.
Farmcrowdy is reshaping the way in which people participate in farming and food production, through using their online platform to source funds from sponsors, whose money is used to secure land, plant crops and meet the funding needs of boosting food production with small scale farmers.
Farm Sponsors can expect to see returns after harvest of 6-25% between a 3-9 month period, depending on what farm type they choose. Having worked with close to 2,000 small scale farmers in Nigeria already, the vast majority of Farmcrowdy sponsors are based in Nigeria, whilst 10% are located in the US and UK.
Speaking at the venue in Lagos, Onyeka Akumah, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Co-founder of Farmcrowdy noted that the idea is to connect farmers with sponsors, thereby increasing the number of lives impacted by the partnership.
According to Akumah, the organisation uses its platform to attract funds from sponsors who cannot do the farming themselves in order to empower farmers, boost food production and aid food sufficiency in the country.
His words: “We have about 38 million small-scale farmers in the country that are regarded as un-bankable; they lack adequate Agro-technology practice and access to a market for the farm produce.
Akumah, CEO of Farmcrowdy speaking on the App launch
“With our platform, we have been able to bridge these gaps by connecting people, who are interested in agriculture but lack the skill and time, to actually fund credible farmers. With the newly launched App which is currently on Google Play Store, it is even easier for investors to monitor farms they invested in.
“Even without being an investor, everyone can benefit from the App through information from experts on how to manage a backyard farm, as well as to monitor farms before deciding to sponsor any. It gives information on agriculture generally.”
He stressed that the platform, which currently operates in eight states, has about 4000 farmers and invested in poultry, maize, cassava, yam and soya beans produce.
According to him, about 1600 people in Akwa-Ibom have been impacted through the programme and about 1000 women trained on how to plant cassava in the state.
Speaking about risk management, Akumah, who assured investors of a viable partnership with Leaderway insurance, said that the platform derisked investors of the farms through insurance against uncontrollable natural disasters in order to build sustainability in the programme.
“A part of the agreement covers insurance of farms and the farmer. You cannot totally have control over everything that happens in agriculture but we try our best and also pray.
“The sharing formula is quite simple as we put investors and farmers first. We share the total income on the harvest by 40-40-20. Investors get 40%, farmers 40% and the other 20% is for Farmcrowdy.
“On expansion, we hope to extend to other countries but right now we want to empower Nigerians to produce Nigerian foods for Nigerians to eat. Later, it will be to empower Ghanaians to produce Ghanaian food for Ghanaians to eat, and so on across the continent,” he noted.
On his part, a former Managing Director of Bank of Industry (BoI), Mr Rasheed Olaoluwa, urged the Federal Government to grant tax holidays to agro-tech companies to encourage their growth.
Olaoluwa urged the government to give tax incentives to emerging sectors such as agro-tech platforms to encourage their pioneering role in developing the agriculture sector.
“Within one year of operation, they have impacted over 1000 farmers directly, if you add the farmers’ wives and children, that is over 5000 people.
“If they are able to impact 1000 at this size, you are talking about impacting millions of lives as they grow. This is the type of start-up and business that government should be trying to encourage in order to have more participation and jobs in the agriculture space,” Olaoluwa noted.
According to him, using technology to drive agriculture will enable the country boost food production, build linkages between farmers and processors and enhance government’s diversification agenda.
In his testimony, Okon Archibong, the Managing Director of Archigreenland Farm in Ifo, Ogun State, noted that he started a poultry in 2001 with about 2600 birds. It did not do very well.
“I got 4000 birds from Farmcrowd and it went well. Now, I have 6000 birds.
Observing that some of the challenges faced at his end are not connected to Farmcrowdy, Archibong advised investors to belive in the initiative’s ability to grow as a way to help farmers.
Mr Godwin Ejeh, the Supply Chain Manager, Syngenta, said that his company was in Nigeria to assist farmers with innovative crop solutions that would transform crop production to enrich farmers.
Ejeh said that the company was partnering Farmcrowdy to provide improved seedlings, knowledge transfer to farmers on best agricultural practice to change the country’s agriculture landscape.
Farmcrowdy, a digital agriculture platform in Nigeria, has been selected by Techstars Atlanta as one of the members of the 2017 Class to participate in its accelerator program in partnership with Cox Enterprises.
The digital startup which was founded in 2016, was named in an announcement made by Techstars on Monday, July 17among the 114 tech startups worldwide participating in the accelerator program.start-ups worldwide participating in the accelerator program.
Techstars is a Worldwide Network that helps entrepreneurs succeed through different avenues and partnerships. With applications from 42 different companies, Farmcrowdy is the only African company which was selected as part of Techstars’ accelerator program.
In his remark, the CEO of Farmcrowdy, Onyeka Akumah who was at Techstars Atlanta on Monday said: “We thank God for the progress He has shown us so far. We are super excited about this opportunity and will be looking forward to learning more from the Techstars Community on how we can scale our efforts from 1,000 currently engaged small-scale farmers to about 10,000 small scale farmers in the next 12 months.
“We also hope to learn about building more relationships with key agro-players in and outside Nigeria in addition to the ones we have while taking advantage of, and amplifying the government’s efforts to grow the Agriculture space in Nigeria.agro-players in and outside Nigeria in addition to the ones we have while taking advantage of and amplifying the government’s efforts to grow the Agriculture space in Nigeria.
“With the knowledge acquired, Farmcrowdy can encourage more youths and middle-class Nigerians to participate in Agriculture while being ‘farmers without a farm’ for the purpose of creating impact and getting returns.”
The Q3 2017 class will now commence an intensive, bootcamp-style program, with weekly mentor meetings, classes and training on various subjects ranging from marketing to sales to funding, and technical and business support.
All participants will be working out of Techstars Atlanta’s Ponce City Market space bootcamp-style program, with weekly mentor meetings, classes and training on various subjects ranging from marketing to sales to funding, and technical as well as business support.
Farmcrowdy, which was voted Top 25 Most Innovative Companies & Institutions Awards 2017 by BusinessDay and won The Agro-Innovator of the Year Award 2016/17 by the Nigeria Agriculture Awards, aims to end poverty one farmer at a time.
With various advancements in technology, a new digital method has been introduced to participate in Agriculture using online technology.
Introduced by Farmcrowdy.com, Nigeria’s first digital agriculture platform, anyone and everyone can now partner with Farmcrowdy to own a minimum farm space/
According to the company in a statement, it is now possible for Nigerians across the world to commit an agreed sum to starting and completing a farming cycle
“In doing so, the farm partner is able to sponsor a farmer in one farming cycle thereby empowering the farmer, expanding their farm operations, participating in the drive to end food scarcity and making use of 50 million hectares of arable farmland in Nigeria that is currently under-utilized according to the World Bank.
“The Farmcrowdy.com platform allows Farms Partners to sponsor any farm of their choice including Maize Farms, Poultry (Broiler) Farms, Cassava Farms and Tomato Farms. The Farm Partners then gets bi-weekly updates about their farm progress including pictures and videos from the farmers. Also, Farm Partners can visit their farms if they wish to at any point in time to learn about the farmer they’ve partnered with and the farm products they are working on,” the statement noted.
Onyeka Akumah who is the Co-Founder and CEO of Farmcrowdy.com, disclosed that the company has acquired “Over 1,000 hectares of farmland in the South-Western part of Nigeria especially in Oyo and Ogun state as we launch this initiative.
“With one farmer working on one hectare per season, this means that we have provided a platform to engage a minimum of 1,000 farmers with Farmcrowdy.
“Our goal is to secure 10,000 hectares around the eastern parts of Nigeria and the LAKAJI Corridor in other to make use of Dams and Irrigation facilities in these areas.”
He further explained that the launch of Farmcrowdy’s website and platform was brought forth out of a need to engage Nigerians especially youths in Agriculture, empower small-scale farmers and increase food production to keep up with the growing Nigerian population.
Onyeka said: “According to a UN research, crop yields need to double within 40 years in order to keep up with the world population growth. For this to happen, it is important to create an efficient farming industry that operates on a large scale so that our food can be saved and our economy can rapidly progress. This revelation has prompted Farmcrowdy to join the farming industry through its Agric-Tech Start-up which makes use of technology to execute agriculture.”
Farmcrowdy boast of an experienced team including its second Co-Founder and COO – Mr. Africanfarmer Mogaji who has over 19 years of experience both in the livestock and crop production industry within and outside Nigeria. Described by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as a‘Champion for Change’, Africanfarmer Mogaji before Farmcrowdy, was the CEO of X-Ray Farms Consulting – a new generation agricultural expert, coach and consultant.
Operating in Agric-tech space, Farmcrowdy is here to bring the best out of the resources available in Nigeria so that Nigeria can increase the production of agricultural raw materials to meet the growth of an expanding industrial sector, reduce poverty and unemployment, offer returns on investment for Farm Owners and Farm Partners while proffering a win-win solution for everyone.
