AgUnity: Connecting the Last Mile

40% of the world’s population earn their income from agriculture, however up to 50% of their crop value is lost between harvest and sale. Simple things solved decades ago are often insurmountable challenges for farmers in emerging markets. This includes crop spoilage, corruption, unreliable record-keeping, and limited access to product and service providers. Two billion of the world’s unbanked are small family farmers and their families, typically earning $2-3 dollars a day. Within this context AgUnity has developed a solution that is providing a pathway to financial inclusion for the world’s poorest farmers. The AgUnity 'Super App’ is a simple mobile service that helps small farmers plan, trade and track everyday transactions, and becomes a way to improve productivity, save money and easily access inputs, capital and knowledge.

If scaled globally to the bottom 2-billion, it is estimated to add up to $1.1 trillion to the global economy each year.

Small scale farmers rarely have access to equipment to assist in the planting, growing and harvesting of their crops, and face significantly restricted market access. Farmers frequently lack access to financing (e.g. microloans) that would allow them to purchase better quality seeds, inputs or rent farming machinery, and also rarely have access to information on best practices on how to get the most out of their land.

One solution to the above problems that is promoted widely by most NGOs such as FAO, Gates Foundation and IFC is the creation of farming cooperatives. Co-operatives harness the power of collective bargaining (better prices at market, cheaper farming input costs), create a structure within which they can agree to share equipment and resources, and provide access to market information that can help farmers decide more profitable crops to plant.

However, farming cooperatives face significant challenges, including: poor record-keeping, a lack of documentation, corruption and graft. Smallholder farmers will contribute the majority of the extra 60% of food required to feed a nine-billion-plus population by 2050, and that co-operatives can play an essential role in helping farmers access proper inputs, capital and knowledge to adapt and become more efficient.

AgUnity provides farmers and other agricultural value chain stakeholders with a low-cost smartphone that come preinstalled with a proprietary Android OS platform, Axsari, and the AgUnity app, which is permanently locked to their identity. In the AgUnity System every person has their own phone which provides their identity, wallet and record of all their transactions.

The AgUnity application is essentially a social and financial network as well as a platform for delivering other 3rd party applications into these remote communities. Beyond recording basic farm records, the AgUnity platform allows for the deployment of hundreds of other applets for a variety of purposes (including Microfinance, Crop Insurance, Banking etc.). 

 Critically the application solves the problem that when small-scale farmers hand over their crops to a co-operative, or hire another farmer’s equipment, that there is a secure record to ensure everyone gets paid. Issues and disputes currently arise when a farming cooperative and a farmer disagree over a previously agreed price, yield or the weight of the crop provided, either due to graft or simply a lack of proper documentation.

Our target population is the 2-billion unbanked low-income small-scale farmers and their families around the world. The majority of these farmers live in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and these are the regions we've targeted in our first pilots. This market is characterised by low-levels of financial inclusion, with few bank accounts or digital identity. There are also very low-levels of literacy, and limited access to technology or educational services.

AgUnity has spent the last four years developing a platform designed to help assist these farmers. Our approach on developing technology hand-in-hand with the very farmers who use it has enabled us to gain a significant insight into the daily lives and challenges encountered by many small-scale farmers in emerging markets, and how digital solutions can help transform these challenges into opportunities.

Many small-scale farmers have very low levels of literacy, some are unable to read or write, putting them at a significant disadvantage with buyers who frequently take advantage.  By spending extensive time in the field working alongside these farmers, dozen iterations of design and field testing have been completed in order to achieve an interface which can be comprehended and used by farmers with low literacy levels.   

Farming co-operatives and digital inclusion are the two most powerful mechanisms for improving small-scale producers ability to access better inputs at more competitive prices, access capital from 

financial institutions previously unable to qualify farmers for a lack of both ID and credit history, and receive knowledge from digital sources (including AgUnity’s Learning Centre) to improve farming practices for better yields, environmental sustainability and income generation.

AgUnity’s platform directly tackles unsavoury behaviour from co-operative administrators while providing digital inclusion for the unbanked, which is a core requirement of solving financial inclusion at scale

Blockchain Ledger: To our knowledge no ‘competing’ solution uses a blockchain backend to capture transaction, ID, IoT, and provenance data. Many solutions are focused on pure ‘farm management’, or their application of blockchain is limited (i.e. focusing only on ID or traceability, but not on transactions). 

Offline performance: Our platform is designed to work in completely offline and low-bandwidth environments in remote and rural areas. This means in addition to offline transactions, when a farmer reconnects to network coverage, the transaction synchronisation protocol prioritises AgUnity transactions, and these are coded for minimal data/bandwidth usage. This minimises the requirement for farmers to have connectivity and data allowances. 

User Experience (UX): is developed specifically for first-time, low-literacy users. Following the principles of Human-Centered Design (HCD), the platform is based around the use of simple geometric shapes, primary colours and few words. This means our solution can be used by any farmer, anywhere, regardless of literacy or prior technology experience. 

Operating System: The development of a proprietary mobile operating system (known as ‘Axsari’), a customised Android-based OS, enables us to tackle unique technical and social challenges faced in remote and rural areas. These include: a lack of continuous network connection; high cost of mobile data; a remotely-accessible and highly secure mobile device; the ability to deploy custom applications that cannot be removed by the user (e.g. mobile banking).

The AgUnity App is the main component of the smartphone solution, it is deployed on a customised version of the Android operating system (Axsari OS). Many of the security, communication, local storage and identity features are functions which AgUnity have custom built into the Axsari OS. 

Each phone contains a unique security key (private and multiple public key pairs) configured at the factory and the OS level. The security key is used to uniquely encrypt data on behalf of the user. Sensitive data is encrypted on the phone before transmission and can only be decrypted with the correct public key. Nobody, including AgUnity, can decrypt the farmer’s sensitive data without being explicitly issued the correct public key by the farmer themselves.

In the event of a lost, stolen damaged or malfunctioning phone the phone can be remotely bricked (locked out) and a fresh phone can then be configured to the farmer’s identity and provided. If the old phone is recovered it can be reinstalled at the factory.

The AgUnity App communicates via the custom asynchronous protocol with a cloud service; the back-end cloud service that incorporates a blockchain. The blockchain is effectively a transaction log for the business system. In the event of a dispute or transactional error the correct state of a farmer’s wallet and basket can be reconstructed from the blockchain transactions.

AgUnity is already being used in in Kenya, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago. There are various applications of the core v3 platform being used, including with IOT sensors for monitoring the processing quality of produce (particularly cacao and coffee), as well as processor and co-operative focused features that enable these users to better manage their production processes and user management respectively. AgUnity has also previously been published by UN Food and Agriculture Organisation as well as IFC World Bank and Oxford University.

Increased farmers’ livelihood, this is attained by several medium-term outputs such as increased level of farmers adaptability/less resistance to technology, increased entrepreneurial and resource planning skills through use of effective AgTech, improved financial behaviour as a result of continuous interaction with the AgUnity platform.

More resilient supply chain that is indicated by better governance, transparency and trust between supply chain actors, and level playing fields between producers and buyers. This outcome is realised by medium-term outputs such as more reliable and dependable supply planning; improved quality control and warehouse management, more frequent sales/customers loyalty, reduce spoilage and wastage, reduced transaction cost/more efficient operational and reliable payment in fair price. These medium-term outputs are viable through data traceability and consensual transparency afforded by the platform. Immediate output of this outcome is the new quality target achieved by traceability function of the platform.

Broadened access to services such as financial, insurance or other technological services. This outcome is attained through accumulated transaction history and KYC-enabling platform where blockchain-backed trust is built for third party service providers. This outcome’s immediate output is the established link and integration of services into AgUnity's marketplace/learning centre function or integration as other applets running in AgUnity platform.

Improved access to market is accomplished through easier ways for producers to promote and reach out to their potential buyers and vice versa, and for buyers to have easier ways to validate potential suppliers track records and to establish and manage transactions. Immediate output of this outcome is the set-up of AgUnity's marketplace and ability for producers and buyers to list their produces and demand on the platform.

Increased rural connectivity with the increasing usage of smartphones in rural areas and with the increased digital literacy of farmers, we expect to garner linkage with telecommunication network and mobile providers to improve connectivity. Immediate output of this outcome is the first time use of smartphones in rural areas, especially for farmers, which the offline-connectivity of AgUnity's platform can enable.

AgUnity is currently contracted to support 1,500 farmers and co-operative users, and is new looking at a new COVID-19 related project to support an additional 800 small-scale farmers in Papua New Guinea.

In one year, we aim to reach 15,000 new farmers, this will be primarily achieved through existing partnerships and co-operatives, for example building on the work with Tsehay Union in northern Ethiopia, that has an estimated member base of 170,000 farmers.

Although ambitious, AgUnity is targeting 10 million small-scale farmers and co-operatives within the next five years.

We have already laid the foundations to achieve this. AgUnity is working with UN WFP, who currently serve ~92 million beneficiaries each year. We are also working with GIZ and multiple coffee value chain stakeholders in Ethiopia, where an estimated 15 million work in coffee production and supply. AgUnity also has contracts with Fairtrade International and Agriterra, working with and targeting ~1.7M and ~1M small-scale farmers and co-operatives respectively.

Ultimately our vision is to become the technology of trust that is used by all small-scale farmers and their families, co-operatives and agri-food value chain stakeholders (over 2 billion people) in developing and emerging markets. 

Through connecting farmers on our platform, we are aiming to see an average farmer income increase between 30% - 70% every 24 months, primarily achieved through better farming practices, connection to more buyers, and access to financial services. This is how adding an extra $1.1 trillion per annum to the global economy can be achieved within 5 years

Our approach to scale is to partner with organisations who are already working with farmers in remote and rural areas, but who lack a technology platform that can be readily deployed. We plan to use both a white label and franchise model of our platform, where a single in-country partner can own the right to promote and deploy our platform in a designated country to enable the rapid global scaling of our services and to reduce the ongoing operational burden on us to manage dispersed geographies, cultures and socio-political environments.

We are also looking to significant leverage existing partnerships (UN WFP, USAID etc) to become the default technology provider for organisations working with last mile farmers and their communities.

The primary barrier for us to achieve our goals in the next year and
five years having the appropriate partnerships and local staff to support the deployment of smartphones and training of farmers on using the AgUnity platform. For AgUnity to have a successful and timely pilot, and for the ability to scale quickly, we require on-the-ground partners who have the existing connections with local farmers and co-ops, and potentially local government and other
stakeholders (e.g. milling, transport, storage companies). Without these partnerships in place, the resource and time cost to AgUnity is significant, as we have to establish trust in each of the required relationships which can take a significant amount of time.

AgUnity is pursuing a partnership model that focuses on both partnerships with service and product providers who already have established business models and services but who are looking for a better way to connect with ‘last mile’ users and grow their existing impact, as well as in-country representatives and like-minded organisations who are keen to promote and deploy AgUnity’s technology and manage the stakeholder engagement and field operations in new locations.

Ultimately AgUnity can address the above challenges most effectively through leveraging the extensive networks of impact-focused organisations to enable them to better deliver their services, and who have the local cultural and industry knowledge to ensure each new deployment has a greater chance of success. Combined with new partnerships and ‘franchine’ or white-label models, AgUnity can reduce the need for complete ownership of the deployment of services to each country and also create new jobs for local businesses looking to support farmers but who are lacking a technology platform to do so.

Full-time: 15

Part-time: 5

Contractors: 10

We have brought together a world-class team.

Founding CEO David Davies: 30-years in technology in senior management at international banks (Goldman, Lehman, SCB, Nomura). Successful founder multiple Mobile, SaaS, FinTech startups; previous work for UNESCO in West Africa.

CCO Petra Schneider: Founder IDEP Foundation, largest NGO in Indonesia, specializing in sustainable community development. Three decades producing education, communication, and high-impact public educational tools. 

CPO Keith Nielsen: 21-years experience in Finance & Banking, Saas and Digital Transactions, as well as Cryptography & Distributed-Ledger Tech. Has led multiple ground-breaking technology prototyping, data engineering, ICT-based projects worldwide. 

Program Director Nurvit Kristofikova: M.A. in Development Studies (IHEID, Switzerland), 15+ years as Program Director, Knowledge Products Developer, MSME & Social Financial Expert. 

CTO Stefan Barrett: 20+ years in programming and application design, working on trading applications for major banks and other financial institutions. Expertise includes transactional functionality and security, and applying innovative approaches to design applications in uniquely efficient or functional ways.

CSO Neville Wood: 25 years of experience in IT Business Analyst, Fin-Tech and Agri-Tech sector. He is expert in Agricultural Business Transformation Projects, including Business Change and IT Systems, experienced in Insurance and Asset Management as well as Business Modelling & Strategy. 

We have 20+ people supporting this project, dispersed between East Africa, Oceania, SE-Asia, Europe and the Americas. Decades of experience in Technology, Finance, Agriculture, Business, Marketing, and Sustainable Development.

AgUnity is currently working with USAID, UN WFP, GIZ, UN CDF, Fairtrade International, Technical Centre for Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA), Bioversity International, Dubai Expo Live 2020, PNG National Government and many more.

In most of these partnerships, AgUnity plays the technology partner with expertise in developing and deploying technology that works in rural areas and for first-time digital users. There are tens of thousands of similar organisations who have decades of experience in capacity building and sustainable development in emerging markets, but who do not currently in-house technology resources to enable to improve the efficiency with which they can reach new beneficiaries as well as track the outcomes of their programs and interactions.

One example of how we are working with our partners is our work with Agriterra (https://agriterra.org/) in Ethiopia, where we have shown how technology can improve cooperative management practices and communications between farmers and co-operatives. Since our work together in Gondar, Ethiopia, working with a cooperative union with 170,000 members, Agriterra has asked us to partner on additional projects to build upon the work completed to date and are currently including technology in their 5-year strategy plan for helping empower co-operatives and farming in emerging markets.

AgUnity's business strategy moves through a phased approach to reaching scale among low-income, small-scale farmers in emerging markets. 

The first phase is undertaking a B2B model, providing technology services to Commodity Buyers, NGOs, Banks, and other 'Service Providers'. For example, AgUnity has a contract with Fairtrade International, delivering an app to help their farmers earn a 'Living Income'. Fairtrade works with over 1.7M farmers worldwide. 

The second phase is a B2C approach, where AgUnity uses these existing relationships and established projects to begin direct marketing to farmers and co-operatives, leading to scale.

To expand further for example, NGOs and organisations pursuing SDG programs often experience challenges assessing the impact of their programs in rural areas, let alone providing high fidelity, broad- spectrum data. Communication between program leaders and farmers can also be very challenging. These programs are also vulnerable to systemic corruption and money leakage by bad actors.

By equipping Last Mile communities with the AgUnity smartphones and ecosystem, NGOs can benefit from a new cost-effective communication channel. Subsequently the NGO can gain insightful data metrics about the impact of their initiatives, enabling them to conclusively and transparently validate their impact efficacy while empowering better, in-field, timely decision making. 

A bit over a decade ago, the iPhone and other smartphones transformed life for most of the developed world. They delivered instant convenience and entertainment in our hand in a way that was previously unimaginable. They didn't however, help those in poverty. Smartphones can more than a year's income for many farmers, and as much they might enjoy Facebook and YouTube as much as we do, they don't help them work, earn more, and feed their children.

AgUnity is transforming all of this.

As AgUnity reaches scale, we will see the transformation of rural communities and the earning capacity of the world's most vulnerable, low-income, and marginalised individuals. We have already witnessed immense potential for farmers to lift themselves out of poverty in our projects, with even further increases possible as they access micro-finance, insurance, a marketplace, and a learning centre via our platform.

By leveraging one of the most successful technologies ever (the smartphone), and developing this to be accessible and useable by low-income, low-literacy users, AgUnity has the unique potential to help improve the lives for over 2-billion small-scale farmers and their families, eliminating the majority of the world's poverty, and achieving UN SDG #1 by 2030. 

But we cannot get there alone. By participating in Solve, we hope to share our story to connect with like minded changemakers, secure global media coverage, recruit the most talented and passionate individuals, and interact with investors and funders who can help drive our vision towards reality.

With the help of MIT Solve, AgUnity hopes to gain advice on how best to expand globally, learn franchise modelling and enter new markets for product distribution. We are continuing to look for the best and brightest driven individuals that are passionate and willing to take the long but successful journey with us. We hope that through MIT Solve we can become connected with such individuals. As AgUnity moves into a growth phase and expands into new countries, we are looking for potential board members and/or advisors with experience in product distribution in emerging markets as well as strong networks within the enterprise impact ecosystem. 

One of the most significant contributions, and a key reason for our application for MIT Solve, is to gain advisory support on developing a clear marketing and distribution strategy to help us scale our solution to as many users in low-income markets. 

Carlow Centeno, Lead for Solve's Economic Prosperity Community: AgUnity hopes Carlow can help us progress sustainable business models for very low-income small-scale farmers. 

Alexander Dale, Lead for Solve’s Sustainability pillar: AgUnity would like to partner with Alexander because of his background in climate change and any potential advice he can provide us on simple and effective ways we can help have a positive impact on climate change through our platform for small-scale farmers.

Retos, Connecting university students to solve rural communities’ challenges: Retos is passionate about connecting newly graduate students and R&D in rural areas. We believe Retos can help us pilot our hackathon strategy for the creation of new jobs for young technology graduates as well as innovative software solutions to help small-scale farmers.

Ultimately, our long-term goal is to become the standard platform of trust for the estimated 2-billion plus (and growing) small-scale farmers and fisherfolk worldwide. These include some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on the planet, and there is a serious sense of urgency in developing this solution, as these communities are poorly equipped to deal with the ever-increasing negative effects of global warming and COVID-19. 

With the support of the Future Capital Planet Prize, AgUnity will pursue the development of its v3 Cooperative Management Platform that can enable us to reach significantly numbers of farmers at scale with low immediate capital investment by farmers and or third-party sponsors. This Coop Platform then becomes a pipeline for distribution of AgUnity phones and v3 App to farmers who can purchase and pay co-operatives directly.

This platform is a pivotal addition to AgUnity’s current product suite and our first project to deploy this platform is working with Agriterra (https://www.agriterra.org/) and Tsehay Union in northern Ethiopia, with an estimated member base of 170,000 farmers.