Digital Cooperatives for Women

One billion smallholder farmers produce 70% of the world’s food. 50% are women. Despite this pivotal role, women are disproportionately marginalised. Most (73%) operate in unstructured markets, earning 50% less than men, often selling crops for less than they cost to produce. 

Our solution, Digital Cooperatives, empowers female smallholders to capture higher values for their products through the power of aggregation - increasing their negotiation power, incomes and access to services by working collectively. 

We combine farmer-led design and pioneering technologies, including blockchain and IoT, enabling remotely located women smallholders using a basic mobile phone to design and benefit from cutting edge technology innovation. At scale, Digital Cooperatives empowers millions of women smallholder farmers worldwide to more equitably participate in food value systems, double incomes, enhance financial inclusion and reduce food loss - transforming food supply chains sustainably, stimulating rural growth and investment, ultimately returning higher value to female farmers.

Women smallholders represent the world’s most under-valued and under-served agripreneurs.  500 million women smallholders worldwide derive their livelihood from agriculture. In Africa, women are responsible for growing 70% of the continent’s food. Yet women remain disproportionately marginalised from global food supply chains. They farm small parcels of marginal land predominantly with their own labour, in rural communities poorly served by infrastructure. They live on < $US2 per day, with incomes typically erratic and seasonal. With the majority (73%) operating in unstructured markets, very few have rights over the land they tend. Furthermore, operating in unstructured markets drives a significant global data gap on the productivity and profitability of crops grown by women. This further undervalues the significant contribution of women smallholders to global supply chains. 

Women are not maximising their income earning potential or value capture from the crops they are growing. We will solve three problems associated with this: 

• Women smallholders lack negotiation power as they are typically selling individually rather than collectively. 

• Pressure to sell quickly before produce rots drives low price sales. 

• Limited data capture on sales transactions and assets is a barrier to female smallholders building the credit profiles required to access financial services and investments.

Our solution - Digital Cooperatives - utilises pioneering technology to create dynamic digital cooperatives specifically for marginalised female smallholder farmers. Uniquely, this system is being designed by female smallholders themselves. 

We digitally replicate the benefits of a cooperative for women smallholders whose access to these benefits is typically limited. Crucially, the power of aggregation and collective negotiation.  When a female farmer has surplus of a crop to sell (fruits, vegetables, poultry, etc), she joins a Digital Cooperative and groups with other women also looking to sell their surplus, collectively enhancing their ability to negotiate better prices and capture value for their products. Sales transactions are digitised, enabling female farmers to build their credit histories. Over time, digitised records of productivity and profit enhance access to financial services.

Our prototype’s blockchain-based platform enables smart contracts between farmers and buyers, as well as with other third-party services providers (e,g micro-insurance). The user interface offers connectivity with multiple devices. Crucially, accessibility using the most basic mobile phone. IoT device integrations, such as weather stations, offer increasingly enriched information services to users. Through our international smallholder network, Producers Direct aims to test and scale Digital Cooperatives to benefit >1 million smallholder farmers by 2025.

We are serving the world’s most under-valued, under-served agripreneurs - the 500 million women smallholders upon whom our global food supply depends. These women currently earn  50% less than men from agriculture, often selling their products for less than they cost to produce. 

The impact of our solution is transformative. We are empowering female farmers to design their own solution and benefit from cutting-edge digital innovation, despite their remote rural locations and infrastructure. We will enhance female farmers’ access to markets, financial services and other inputs required to farm profitably and sustainability. Early prototype testing indicates potential to achieve >100% income increases for female smallholders by 1.) Reducing on-farm food loss from being able to better predict and plan sales opportunities for their surplus; 2.) Negotiating better prices by working collectively;  3.) Enhanced market access opportunities, jointly supplying larger volumes to buyers who are unreachable when selling alone, such as supermarkets.

For the first time, production and sales data on the crops grown by women will be systematically documented at scale. Building credit histories and asset records enhances access to financial services, supporting further on-farm investment. Ultimately, female smallholders will be empowered to do business on their own terms. 

For sustainability of global food supply chains, we need to empower women, (50% of the world’s smallholders) to operate on equal terms with other value chain actors. Our solution, Digital Cooperatives, achieves this by: 

• Enabling women smallholders to reduce post-harvest food loss through enhanced, efficient, more consistent connections to markets for their productions; 

• Directly connecting producers and buyers, building transparent, traceable food supply chains for currently unstructured crops through pioneering blockchain technology and smart contracts. 

• Creating a scalable new business model for unstructured value chains that ultimately maximises value capture for women smallholders at the centre of these value chains.