With agriculture being one of the most common practices in Africa and generator of the continent’s yearly revenue, Farmcrowdy, an initiative developed to match investors and farmers of both small and medium scales has been advised by Russell Southwood on the operations of the platform and all plans for the future.
With the support of the Nigerian Government, Farmcrowdy started it research in 2016 and tried to work out how farmers can benefit from the initiative, looking at which farms should be invested in and the investment processes.
From the research conducted by the founders of Farmcrowdy, they discovered that the major problem that most farmers faced was accessing loans for land expansion, acquiring appropriate machinery and also the final sale of their harvest. In their view, this non-availability of data was mostly the reason why investors were reluctant at putting their money into these farmlands, hence why the development of the initiative became important.
The initiative was able to raise $1 Million seed investment in 2017 from various groups of companies like Cox Enterprises, Techstars Ventures, Social Capital, Hallett Capital and Right-Side Capital; as well as angel; investors Tyler Scriven, Michael Cohn, Josephine Group, FC Agro Allied SPV and Dr. Christof Walter.
Usually, the process of selecting a farmer for investment is highly important as the crops being planted and the prospective yield are being considered to ensure the right investor is placed with the right farmer.
Over the next two years, Farmcrowdy plans to implement a two-fold plan which will improve on the state of agriculture within and outside of Nigeria. Therefore, the platform will be working with more farmers to fine-tune the business model with hopes to branch to Kenya, Ghana and Uganda in the fourth quarter of 2018 or first quarter of 2019.
