Suma

Fair marketing platform of family agriculture that directly connects producers with food buyers.

Although family farming is responsible for about 70% of Brazil's food production, farmers are part of a chain with many actors who pay poorly who plants and charges a lot of those who buy. Suma seeks to increase the qualification of rural communities, especially the youth, so that family farming can achieve fairer markets and a better quality of life. Suma is a web platform and a app with a qualification module for family farmers sell their products for markets that . For assist the farmer in this new way of farm management, Suma has a specific module for extension agents, very common in developing countries such as Brazil. With the inputs being upload in the system, the farmers, their stories and most of all their harvests will be displayed in a map. The buyers have their own module which they will be able to search for products they need and see if they are on season. If they aren't, the system will suggest more sustainable menus and orders based on criteria such as distance for delivery. The trades are based in transparency and traceability, and will be displayed for all the parts, such as the transport company, that will be choose by the farmer in fair trade register available in Suma.

Suma reflects the need for systemic changes in an millennial chain that affects different parts with very distant characteristics.The main innovation of Suma in relation to other solutions lies in the qualification of the family farmers on aspects of the rural business. Suma has three learning and development modules covering Property Management, Production Management and Market and Clients. Each level of service qualifies the farmer for a specific market by increasing the efficiency of business contacts and contracts directly.

The technology for Suma is the tool that allows the shortening of the production chain and food consumption. Through the functionalities developed to identify agricultural production, product quality and market demands, we were able to contract food purchases directly from family agriculture in a shorter time, reducing costs and waste than traditional intermediaries. The use of technology promotes the rapid expansion of the impact generated by Suma with the better remuneration of the farmers and the permanence of the young people in the field with quality of life.

- Increased income of skilled/qualified farmers (R $) / month.
- Index of payment of agricultural financing of family farmers (R $)
- Index / schooling level of family farmers and family members (%)
- Quantity of products tracked by Suma (kg) / month.

In 5 years, we believe that Suma will have transformed the reality of many families in the countryside, bringing fresh and healthy food to restaurants. As is happening, for example, with the Morro Redondo Family Farmers' Cooperative, which is part of Suma and reached in its first contract an income of R $ 18 thousand for 10 families with a restaurant located less than 35 km from the headquarters of cooperative. The technology identified production and regional demands.

Farmers are paid very little for the produce they give to the markets, but these markets charge a much higher price to the consumers. This huge overprice is paid by the consumer and doesn't go to the farmer. For nutritioninsts from a meal prep company, they are not able to source produce directly from farmers. The relation with food distributors has many impacts: the produce is not fresh. There is a R$ 16.6 billion market of collective meals in Brazil in 2016 and 5 millions familiy farmers with this problem, for us this is an opportunity of social impact.

There are 90 non-cooperative families registered in the Suma platform, 10 agricultural cooperatives with 1595 families, 103 food buyers.
- 7% average reduction in the cost of products for buyers.
- An average increase of 26% in farmers' remuneration.

Daiana, family farmer's granddaughter and environmental engineer, and Alexander, agronomist, began the project that gave life to Suma in 2013. They still are partners and executives of Suma. Through their experiences with family farming, they perceived the need to bring market information to the field and transformed the way farmers do their jobs through technology. Initially, they developed the project to serve government markets, however, due to the problems of corruption in Brazil, they started to match the products of family agriculture to the private markets. They have tested many platforms and strategies to develop a fair business model.

Suma works with individual farmers and cooperatives (organized groups). With each new registration a professional makes a field visit with the application and makes an assessment to understand the level that this user is in relation to the requirements of the buyers and what the follow-up he needs. From that moment on, the app and the web system will give support with occasional visits from the professional. The technological roadmap includes the intense development of functionalities that reduce face-to-face visits by artificial intelligence and chatbots, guaranteeing growth with stable costs. The estimated market size of family farmers who demand support for marketing their products in Brazil is 5 million families. We have professionals for commercial approach in restaurants, industrial canteens, hospitals, schools, penitentiaries and others. With the demands and the agricultural production mapped, the realization of the curation promotes an exponential scale gain. In September 2017 at the launch of the platform we had 8 families and 03 buyers, we currently have 1595 families and 103 buyers.

Our investments will be primarily to intensify the programming team, with the hiring of 3 developers with applications experiences, artificial intelligence and chatbots. Investments in marketing are still planned, such as videos-pill on the stories of the rural families, rescuing the valuation of the work in the field and updating with the new tools used by Sum√°. We also hiring a specialist in logistics and transport to support new developments concerning api route maps.

Suma's goal is to shorten the food distribution chain by offering direct or shorter routes between family farmers and food buyers. Our strategy is based on the logic of consuming as close as possible to where the food is produced and through this intelligence map register distributors aligned with fair trade criteria. MVP has shown that these distributors are the more mature farmers who have already developed logistical solutions for their business and are aware of the difficulties in the field, which is why they understand Suma's business model.