AgUnity: Connecting the Last Mile

AgUnity’s mission for the past 5 years has been to help lift 2 billion smallholder farmers out of poverty by helping them thrive in the food supply chain which will allow them to earn more and feed their families, help them reduce food waste and crop spoilage which will in turn reduce their CO2 footprint, as well as digitisation, financial inclusion, accountability/traceability/provenance and training. If our solution is scaled globally, the AgUnity App can transform the lives of billions of people and is estimated to add up to $1.1 trillion to the global economy each year. 

Of the world’s three billion people living on less than $5.50 per day, two billion of them live in rural areas of low- and middle-income countries (World Bank and FAO). These two billion people are all part of communities that rely on smallholder farming and are often isolated and subject to many issues of corruption and fraud, which ultimately causes a lack of trust. Poor availability of communication channels inhibits collaboration and prevents access to most basic services that these smallholder farming communities need to thrive. Some of the specific challenges that smallholder farmers and producer organisations face include:

• Lack of access to high quality farming inputs (eg. Seeds, fertilizer, etc.) 
• Lack of access to farming best practice methods and education 
• Lack of access to weather information and forecasts 
• Lack of access to financial services (eg. Micro-finance, crop insurance, bank accounts) 
• Lack of access to reliable produce pricing information 
• Lack of effective communication methods with downstream supply chain actors  Lack of access to historical data, information and resources to improve their business management and planning. 

The AgUnity solution is a smartphone, operating system and application designed with, and for, smallholder farmers. The smartphones come preinstalled with the proprietary Android OS platform, Axsari, and the AgUnity app, which is permanently locked to the farmer’s identity. The phone can perform peer-to-peer transactions (such as “Give Harvest” or “Receive Cash”) that can be completed without signal using QR codes, which can be later reconciled when signal resumes. In the AgUnity System every person has their own phone which provides their identity, wallet and record of all their transactions. The transactions are recorded securely using blockchain technology, which results in significantly improved traceability, quality assurance and trust.

This solution is also the world’s first digital services platform designed specifically to connect the ‘Last Mile’. Once connected, these smallholder farmers can access all of the services they need to lift themselves out of poverty. Farmers can access high quality farming inputs from an online marketplace, share and receive education as well as check weather forecasts and produce prices. Most importantly, they can also use their secure digital identity, wallet and record of transactions and revenue to access micro-finance and other financial services.

Our target population is the 2-billion unbanked low-income smallholder 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 five 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 smallholder farmers in emerging markets, and how digital solutions can help transform these challenges into opportunities. 

Many smallholder 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.

Our target market is the 2-billion unbanked low-income smallholder farmers around the world. Many 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. These communities also include marginalised women and youth, who have often lost their husbands or parents, and are ostracised or disempowered by the communities they live in. We target 50/50 split between male and female farmers, and 50/50 between youth and older farmers.

AgUnity is active in 9 countries with clients including USAID, UN WFP, GIZ, UN CDF, Fairtrade International, Technical Centre for Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA), Bioversity International, Dubai Expo Live 2020, Virginia Tech University and many more. In Oct 2020, AgUnity secured its first ‘COVID-19’ contract, supporting 8 agribusinesses and 100k smallholder farmers in Uganda. Our product is ready to be deployed in farming communities having successfully completed multiple pilots.

AgUnity's approach is unique because we are leveraging three separate technological advances that have never previously been seen in modern society: mass telecommunications coverage; cheap smartphone devices; and distributed ledger technology (a.k.a. Blockchain). 

Key innovations include: 

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.

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.

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, 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).

Utility Token: AgUnity has just help launched AgriUT (explainer: https://youtu.be/YA-ZjgviKcE), a digital utility token that can be sent to farmers as a ‘reward’ by consumers for the produce they grow.

AgUnity is currently contracted to support approximately 2,000 farmers across multiple countries and commodities. However, within the last 12 months, AgUnity has also secured three new contracts with Fairtrade International to use and enhance the existing product to support their smallholder farmer network. Fairtrade International has 1.8M smallholder farmers and 1,700 cooperatives worldwide, with approximately 15B in Fairtrade-certified produce being sold each year.

AgUnity’s two adaptions of its existing tech for Fairtrade include a farmer-focused smartphone app as well as a web reporting application for all of their cooperatives. In one year, we anticipate to be serving 10,000 farmers with the farmer-app and 1,000 cooperatives with the web reporting application (these cooperatives representing approximately 1M farmers, although the final number will depend on which cooperatives are selected for the first stage of rollout).

In 5 years, we anticipate to be serving a total of 3M farmers, including all current Fairtrade farmers as well as additional farmers from our existing partner networks (these include cooperative unions is already working with / has directly engaged that represent ~750,000 farmer members).

AgUnity recently hired a consultant to develop our Theory of Change in partnership with a local impact-based venture capital fund (ImpaQt Qld). This ToC is still in its final stages of being drafted before being adopted by the company as the new standard of impact measurement for all its projects and partnerships. You can read more on the ToC and associated impact goals via this link: https://bit.ly/3wxh44r.

FTE: 20, PTE: 20, Contractors: 14

We have brought together a world-class team with decades of experience in Technology, Finance, Agriculture, Business, Marketing, and Sustainable Development.

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.

Within the AgUnity team, we have over 50 team members that span across 18 different countries. AgUnity is focused on empowering their employees to embrace not only their roles, but also culture and vision. We work with people from all over the world and together we can change the lives of millions of people. Our team has joined hands to empower farmers to create a profound and positive economic impact on their local communities enabling them to lift themselves from poverty, reduce inequality, and improve global stability.

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 smallholder farmers and their families, eliminating the majority of the world's poverty, and achieving UN SDG #1 by 2030.

By applying to Solve, we hope to secure global media coverage, connect with investors and funders that have a passion for change and helping ‘Last Mile’ communities, and most importantly to share our remarkable story with likeminded gamechangers.

We hope that through MIT Solve we can connect with driven and passionate individuals that are willing to dedicate their time and energy to AgUnity and our mission to eliminate poverty.

AgUnity is on track to expand to new countries despite the effects of COVID-19. 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. We have been successful in building our technology and creating new partnerships, but we have not had the resources to invest in a robust, multi-country, multi-stakeholder marketing strategy.

AgUnity would like to partner with organisations that have a focus on climate change that can provide us with knowledge on how climate change will affect farmers in the future and how we can use our platform to create a positive impact, including the use of a digital token for carbon credit trading schemes.