FarmSYS - by Cybermonk SD

FarmSYS is web based business solution available for free to farmers that aims to gainfully engage farmers and especially youth in farming areas around the country (Kenya) as Farm Agents who will offer a business service using the solution to farmers thus enabling them apply formal business principles to their farming activities /operations while simultaneously posting and exposing their farm produce online to greater markets.

FarmSYS will  connect farmers directly to buyers and food processors and provide highly reliable and continuously updated agricultural data for consumption by data consumers such as Investors, Farm Inputs / Equipment Suppliers, Advertisers, Government, Non Governmental organizations, etc.

FarmSYS will boost consolidation and delivery services  of farm produce in the region.

If implemented globally, FarmSYS will map  farms and agriculturally productive areas and enable investment, pre-harvest forecasting and post-harvest analysis of farm produce, including dairy, meat, fish and poultry produce.

In Kenya, agriculture accounts for 25 - 30% of the National Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with 75 - 80% of the population employed in the agricultural sector. About 50% of Kenya's total agricultural output is non-marketed subsistence production.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), farmers lost Kes 150 billion (USD 1.45b) as they struggled to manage, store and transport their produce to market.

Growers lost over 1.9 million tonnes of food, even as millions grappled with starvation. 

A third of produce is lost post-harvest. One key cause is consumers who buy more than they need (Due to oversupply in nearby local markets). 

Farmers lost Kes 29.6 billion (USD 287 million) to post-harvest wastage on Maize alone.

Meanwhile Maize imports reached Kes 42 billion (USD 407 million) bought with hard-to-come-by foreign currency when local (rural) farmers could be enabled to produce and supply.

Most farmers, particularly rural subsistence farmers, lack access to solutions that would get them sufficiently organized to attain surplus production and also move from subsistence to commercial Agriculture with a way of exposing their produce to bigger markets for better prices. 

Wasted labour: Farmers lost over Kes 150 billion

Economic Survey 2018.pdf (Page No.133(158) - Maize).

We aim to serve all farmers in Kenya and Africa. Currently we have a database of 9,000 small scale farmers in Kwale County In Kenya. We have operatives on the ground some who are also farmers informing us of the challenges farmers face in seed procurement, planting, harvesting and selling their produce.

We plan is to serve farmers in Coast, Nairobi, Eastern, Central, Rift Valley and Nyanza provinces in Kenya. FarmSYS can be expanded (replicated) in other Countries in Africa, including Uganda and Tanzania, Rwanda, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Malawi, etc.

How it will work:

i. Farm Agents and Farmers will gather farm produce data at all stages of production and post updates of farm produce including pictures online. 

They will also capture operational data, such as farming activities, farm inputs and expenses to enable farmers apply business principles to their farming activities maintain business records that they can use to with credit lenders etc.

ii. The platform will be marketed online send buyers to the posted produce, meat, poultry etc.

iii. Buyers would be required to pay online or via M-Pesa to purchase produce online.

iv. Farm Agents will view posted orders on the system. They will then contact their farmers via texting tools on the system or telephone calls to get confirmation if the order can be fulfilled and if not then they will decline the order. Cancelled orders will be re-posted to other farmers / farm agents with similar produce.

v. Funds would be released directly to Farmer’s account less Farm Agent commission, Transport charges and other minimal fees such payment gateway charges.

vi. Farmers will then proceed to prepare and package ordered produce and notify the farm agent who will flag the orders  as ready for   for pickup. (They may also call preferred transporters to arrange for delivery).

vi. Transporters and couriers connected to the system will view produce that is ready for pick up,  agree on pickup points with farm agents and  proceed to collect and deliver produce to buyers.  Funds will be released to transporter account upon confirmed delivery.

vii. Data consumers such as Investors, Farm Inputs / Equipment Suppliers, Advertisers, Government, Non Governmental organization will be able to log into a continuously updated data feed to consume various agricultural data.

Important benefit: 

FarmSYS will get young people in especially in (rural) farming areas to  participate productively and gainfully in Agriculture and help reverse rural to urban migration while  reducing the influence of middle men and cartels.

Innovations of FarmSYS are as follows:

1. Providing for gainful participation on the platform by Farm Agents who are young tech savvy people in farming areas to gather and post farm operational data and produce on the system.

By the nature of their work and lives farmers have so much work to in a day to fit in entering farm operation data into a computer, tablet or phone.

Rural farmers are also not tech savvy and are generally be averse to computers and digital technology which they consider as toys and a waste of time. This is why there are very few well known successful or popular business solutions for farmers or for the Agricultural sector.

2. Providing FarmSYS as a free business service. With the foregoing, it is difficult to convince many farmers to pay for a business solution or employ someone to use it. They however would be more receptive where someone else took up the job of gathering operational data and posting their farm produce to inform them of incoming orders. 

3. Paying Farm Agents from commission on produce sales. A Farm Agent representing several farms may be able to generate more than sufficient income through commissions earned from produce sales and be motivated to get more farms on the platform thus increasing its reliability and popularly.

4. Vertical integration. Buying directly from farmers would make it possible for produce buyers such as hotels, schools and food processors to procure produce in bulk at much lower prices.

FarmSYS utilizes Microsoft's Software Development Technologies as follows:

1. Microsoft Visual Studio (vb.net) for Web Application Development

2. Microsoft SQL Server Database Technologies

3. Microsoft Azure Cloud Hosting Services

4. Various Open Source Technologies and APIs such as iTextsharp (PDF Reports) and EPPlus (MS Excel Reports)

These make the system accessible to public, farmers and businesses via internet with the and ensure that the solution can scale up to handle future growth 

FarmSYS will help farmers get organization in their farming activities, and expose their produce to greater markets online. 

FarmSYS will help reduce the effect of exploitative middlemen who have stood between the farmer and the buyer for along time;buying from farmers at extremely low prices, controlling supply sometimes creating artificial shortages to sell at very high prices. 

FarmSYS will connect produce buyers directly to farmers to provide them with many sources of farm produce, dairy, meat and poultry products at competitive prices.

We expect to be serving about 50,000 small scale to medium scale farmers next year and about 250,000 to 750,000 in the next 5 years.

Our goals for the next 5 years are as follows:

1. To empower farmers and get them to be taken seriously. In Africa farmers are perceived to be poor people of little consequence and are only remembered when there is shortage of food.

2. To get young people in rural as well as urban areas to gain interest and participate in agriculture using information technology to manage and market produce for their own farms or as Gents for other farms.

3. Create a positive disruption and even a revolution in the African agricultural industry by reducing the influence of middle men and cartels who exploit farmers by directly connecting farmers to buyers and
food processors.

4. To provide a simplified and user friendly business application available for free to farmers and farmer institutions (farmer co-operative unions) in Kenya and Africa at large to enable them apply Information Technology to adopt new farming methods, plan their production, prevent saturation and waste of
produce, market their agricultural produce more effectively (on the internet) and increase their income.

5. To build reliable partnerships and a network of produce transporters and handlers. 

6. To become an African Software Company that produces high quality and low cost software that will become the default solutions for Kenyan and African industries and businesses.

The barriers that prevent us from achieving our goals are:

1. Lack of sufficient capital resources to market and mobilize out solution(s).

2. Less than reliable electricity and internet connectivity in farming areas.

3. Lack of proper access to training and skills on cutting edge software development technologies such artificial Intelligence.

4. Lack of proper access to training and skills on marketing models and tools.

We plan to overcome these barriers by:

1. Continuing to develop and market our solutions with the resources that we have to gain traction and attract investment into our company.

2. Make Agricultural areas (rural) more attractive for investment and viable for infrastructural development by governments  by mapping them in our system and enabling farmers to sell more.

3. Source for software technologies and marketing tools online.

We have a team of 9 working on FarmSYS:

1. Michael Mulela - Director & Lead Developer (Founder)

2. Carol Mwanzia - Administration Duties + Data Buildup and Clean up.

3. Eric Kilelu - Development and Support

4. Charles Kinyanjui - Business Development

5. Esther Nafula - Data Buildup

6. Teresa Ehawa - Data Buildup

7. William Ngure - Field Operations and Farmer Interviews & Registrations

8. Titus Njuguna - Support and Data Buildup 

9. Consolata Alusiola - Support and Data Buildup 

1. We have over 15 years experience developing and marketing software solutions to small to medium sized businesses, schools, medical clinics, hotels, traders, etc and addressing challenges that are unique to the African business environment, industries and economies. We very conversant with user attitudes toward business software solutions in our region. 

3. We have a good mix of talent, age-range required to develop and deploy FarmSYS. Our team has young people who understand lack of income generating opportunities for youth and are able to connect with them to recruit them as Farm Agents who are key to the success of the solution. 

4. Our business development department well experienced to get bulk produce buyers (schools, hotels and other institutions) and food processing companies to source for produce and raw materials on our platform especially at pilot stage.

5. Our field agents are well networked with rural farmers (some are farmers themselves). They are well able to explain the solution to other farmers. To date they have compiled a database of over 9,000 farmers to help pilot the project.

Examples of solutions we have developed that provide us with the required experience:

1. C&F PRO Freight Forwarding Solution - that enables freight forwarders to Digitize and Automate Freight Forwarding operations, etc.

2. Clinic OP + AuthPrescript + Sokoladawa.com - an integrated healthcare system that among other functions, connects patients and public to pharmacies to enable them get the best offers for their prescriptions.

At the moment we do not have a partner organization but we are exploring those that may be interested and have applied to organizations such as Nestle though various platforms.

Our Business Model is for profit.

We create software solutions and provide technical support and generate our revenue as follows:

1. Charging our software solutions on perpetual and subscription licencing options

2. Selling software solutions from other companies such as Enterprise Resource Planners (ERPs)

3. Charging for user support services to clients using our own software solutions and software solutions from other companies.

4. Charging for training and user requested updates for our software solutions.

5. Charging for Hardware maintenance services offered to our clients.
How

Our path to financial sustainability is as follows:

1. Raise capital through equity, venture capital and grants to develop software solutions 

2. Make sales and inject more capital as required (1. above) to increase sales and revenues until we reach self sustainability and generate profits.

We are applying to solve for the following reasons:

We think Solve can specifically help our project in the following areas:

• Expose our company and project to agribusiness investors and more importantly to experts in the (medium scale) agriculture and food processing industry, farm produce transportation, handling and distribution, information technology, big data analytics, e-commerce, data - commerce and business intelligence.
• Mentorship and capacity building for our team in terms of IT skills (particularly AI & BI) Marketing Skills, Managements skill, etc. Solve could help us get the requisite business and management expertise in implementing our solution on a scale that spans multiple countries in our continent (Africa) and even internationally depending on our level of success.
• Publicity and Exposure of our Solution and Company in Solves' various high-profile events, forums and platforms.

The key barrier and the barrier for solutions such as ours in Africa is farmer computer literacy and interest in adopting formal business principles in their farming activities especially rural farmers. 

Our strategy to overcome this is by recruiting farm agents on our platform (for free) who would offer farmers free business and marketing services using our solution (in exchange for commission on sales through our platform). This will require resources to mount awareness campaigns and workshops in various farming areas around the country, train and equip some of them with PCs, Laptops, Tablets and solar panels (where necessary) and to follow up on them so that replacements or additions can be done where necessary. 

We would be interested to partner with: 

1. Institution interested in Investing in the African Agricultural Industry.

2. Agriculture Experts especially in medium scale agricultural production.

3. Farm Input and Equipment Makers (Produce Storage and Packing experts, Seed Companies, Fertilizer companies, Tractor and Harvester Makers, etc)

4. Food Processing Companies

5. Venture Capitalists and other Funding Institutions

6. Artificial Intelligence (AI) , E-commerce, data commerce and data analytics companies and experts. 

7. Corporate business and legal experts. 

AI Innovations Prize would be mostly utilized in research and development of information technologies that would be used in data analytics to provide pre-planting insights, pre-harvest forecasting and post harvest analysis and farm produce demand trends.

The two thirds  of the AI Innovations Prize would be use to fund the following activities:

1. Research and training in AI software development tools and skills.

2. Expand our development team from 2 to a maximum of 5 and fund development and marketing of the FarmSYS (Cover running costs and team salaries / wages).

The remaining third would be used as follows:

1. To expand the agriculture field team from 2 to a maximum of 15

2. To recruit, equip, train, and sustain youth in rural farming areas as Farm Agents for 3 months to 1 year. Their task would be gather and post/ update farm operations and produce data on the system a reliable source of agricultural data. 

A key objective of the pilot is get a minimum of 1000 to a maximum of 3000 farm agents around the country each serving 5 - 10 farms within their community / area to get farm operations and produce data for 5,000 to 30,000 farms posted on the system within the first year.

Budget Estimates:

1.Farm Agent Training and equipping with low cost Tablet - USD 1,000 (max) each.

2. Running Expenses (Wages, Utilities, Hosting, Internet, Meals, Travel, Accommodation) - USD 5,000 per month (for the entire team)

Half of the GM Prize on Community-Driven Innovation Prize would  be utilized for the FarmSYS pilot as follows:

1. To expand the agriculture field team from 2 to a maximum of 15

2. To recruit, equip, train, and sustain youth in rural farming areas as Farm Agents for 3 months to 1 year. Their task would be gather and post/ update farm operations and produce data  on the system a reliable source of agricultural data. 

The objective of the pilot is get a minimum of 1,000 to a maximum of 3,000 farm agents around the country each serving 5 - 10 farms within their area to get data for 5,000 to 30,000 farms posted on the system within the first year.

The other half would used to Expand our development team from 2 to a maximum of 5 and fund development and marketing of the FarmSYS (Cover running costs and team salaries / wages).

Budget Estimates:

1.Farm Agent Training and equipping with low cost Tablet - USD 1,000 (max) each.

2. Running Expenses (Wages, Utilities, Hosting, Internet, Meals, Travel, Accommodation) - USD 5,000 per month (for the entire team)  

Two thirds of the  Innovation for Women Prize would  be utilized to fund the FarmSYS pilot as follows:

1. To expand the agriculture field team from 2 to a maximum of 15

2. To recruit, equip, train, and sustain (young) women in rural farming areas as Farm Agents for 3 months to 1 year. Their task would be gather and post/ update farm operations and produce data  on the system a reliable source of agricultural data. 

The objective of the pilot is get a minimum of 1,000 to a maximum of 3,000 farm agents around the country each serving 5 - 10 farms within their area to get data for 5,000 to 30,000 farms posted on the system within the first year.

The remaining third would used to Expand our development team from 2 to a maximum of 5 and fund development and marketing of the FarmSYS (Cover running costs and team salaries / wages).

Budget Estimates:

1.Farm Agent Training and equipping with low cost Tablet - USD 1,000 (max) each.

2. Running Expenses (Wages, Utilities, Hosting, Internet, Meals, Travel, Accommodation) - USD 5,000 per month (for the entire team)

Kenya is a long time host of refugees from nearby conflict torn countries such as Somalia and South Sudan.

Refugees who able to get settled in the country rely on livestock keeping and subsistence farming for their livelihood.

Three quarters of the the Prize for Innovation in Refugee Inclusion would mostly be utilized to fund the FarmSYS pilot as follows:

1. To expand the agriculture field team from 2 to a maximum of 15

2. To seek and reach settled refugees, recruit and equip them with PCs, laptops, tablets and solar panels (where necessary) as Farm Agents for 3 months to 1 year. Their task would be gather and post/ update farm operations and produce data from their host communities  on the system a reliable source of agricultural data. 

The objective of the pilot is get a minimum of 1,000 to a maximum of 3,000 farm agents around the country each serving 5 - 10 farms within their area to get data for 5,000 to 30,000 farms posted on the system within the first year.

The remaining quarter would used to Expand our development team from 2 to a maximum of 5 and fund development and marketing of the FarmSYS (Cover running costs and team salaries / wages).

Budget Estimates:

1.Farm Agent Training and equipping with low cost Tablet - USD 1,000 (max) each.

2. Running Expenses (Wages, Utilities, Hosting, Internet, Meals, Travel, Accommodation) - USD 5,000 per month (for the entire team)

Two thirds of Innospark Ventures Prize would be utilized to fund research and development of information technologies that would be used in data analytics to provide pre-planting insights, pre-harvest forecasting and post-harvest analysis and produce demand trends of data gathered on the platform.

This would include expanding our development team from 2 to a maximum of 5 and fund development and marketing of the FarmSYS (Cover running costs and team salaries / wages).

The remaining third would used as follows:

1. To expand the agriculture field team from 2 to a maximum of 15

2. To recruit, equip, train, and sustain (young) women in rural farming areas as Farm Agents for 3 months to 1 year. Their task would be gather and post/ update farm operations and produce data  on the system a reliable source of agricultural data. 

The objective of the pilot is get a minimum of 1,000 to a maximum of 3,000 farm agents around the country each serving 5 - 10 farms within their area to get data for 5,000 to 30,000 farms posted on the system within the first year.

Budget Estimates:

1.Farm Agent Training and equipping with low cost Tablet - USD 1,000 (max) each.

2. Running Expenses (Wages, Utilities, Hosting, Internet, Meals, Travel, Accommodation) - USD 5,000 per month (for the entire team)

Two thirds of Morgridge Family Foundation Community-Driven Innovation Prize would  be utilized for the FarmSYS pilot as follows:

1. To expand the agriculture field team from 2 to a maximum of 15

2. To recruit, equip, train, and sustain youth in rural farming areas as Farm Agents for 3 months to 1 year. Their task would be gather and post/ update farm operations and produce data on the system a reliable source of agricultural data.

The objective of the pilot is get a minimum of 1,000 to a maximum of 3,000 farm agents around the country each serving 5 - 10 farms within their area to get data for 5,000 to 30,000 farms posted on the system within the first year.

The remaining third would be used to help expand our development team from 2 to a maximum of 5 and fund development and marketing of the FarmSYS (Cover running costs and team salaries / wages).

Budget Estimates:

1.Farm Agent Training and equipping with low cost Tablet - USD 1,000 (max) each.

2. Running Expenses (Wages, Utilities, Hosting, Internet, Meals, Travel, Accommodation) - USD 5,000 per month (for the entire team)

We do not think our project would be eligible for this price but stand to be advised.