Agriculture as we know it, is backbone of many economies and especially in the Sub-Saharan Africa. But quite a handful of people actually understand the food supply chain and what goes into it. From seed factories, to farmers with a half an acre producing tomatoes, to the tomato pastes we buy at our groceries stores and even the ones exported to international markets. The food supply chain is huge and has a lot of inputs going into it. We will try to look at this from a wider perspective, the gaps and cracks in the supply chain, and opportunities in the eco system. We will also look into how data and traceability can help unlock huge economic wins for agribusiness and tech startups alike.
The first component is what I love to call the Lower Level producers. These are your small scale farmers who produce food primarily to be sold in the local markets and somehow the regional markets in the country. They produce your Spinach, avocados, carrots, and day to day groceries we all use everyday. The people in this category do agriculture as a means to survive and make a small living that satisfies their normal needs.
The second component I refer it to as the Middle Men Level. This level includes a group of traders who will go and buy the produce from the first level in bulk and supply them to different markets at a whole sale price. These markets include the local markets at the same region or regional markets in the same country. In this level of the supply chain the players don’t get to worry about farming techniquesz, harvest loss, or any stress related to the growing of the produce. They come in when everything is ready and the low level producer wants to cash out.
The third level, which is the upper level of the food supply chain involves the business of import and export of agricultural produce. The main players here include Agribusinesses who have mapped out many producers from the last two level, collect the produce, add value to them and export them to international markets or even supply to the national market at large scale. You can see the statement of Agriculture being the backbone of the economy on this stage by just reading the volume that these companies export annually.
However there’s quite a few challenges that is a common theme in most of these upper level producers that software can chip in and make a difference.
SAAS for Agribusinesses.
It was actually to my surprise that a lot of these agribusinesses record their data in excel and google sheets. Yes it gets the job done but for a company doing $500M in ARR surely there has to be a SAAS that fits their custom work flows right, right? Well in talking to these companies most of the SAAS out there doesn’t fit their workflow and they have no choice but to stick to the google sheets which doesn’t scale enough. Soon you have hundreds of excel sheets that are hard to track and ended up being abandoned after a certain quarter. With the current available LLMs and AI, what insights can these businesses draw from all these data that is now collecting dust?. We talk about AI being the future but to these businesses what matters is how can they best integrate AI to fit into their current workflow and not the other way around.
Traceability System.
We usually trace where our cars are coming from, who made them and on which part of the world. We can also do that for our food, we can give the end consumer enough information on where the food they’re eating is coming from, who farmed it, and what inputs and fertilisers were used in making that food. We should be able to trace the food from the moment it is planted to when it is packed and shipped.
Custom Software for Agribusinesses.
Other companies will love to have a custom software that suits their workflows and solve the problems that they currently have. Most SAAS providers offer an insanely high fees for software customisation. So there’s a huge section of businesses who would love to have this kind of software but don’t have the margins necessary to cover the high cost of software customisation
Communication System.
Most of these farmers don’t have access to email and even WhatsApp is not that common among them. One thing to be guaranteed is they will have access to SMS. We can create a communication system that these agribusinesses can use to send reminders, communications, and other information in an easy and seamless manner.
All these problems can be easily solved with software. I have been researching Agriculture for over 5 years and understanding the full supply chain that I had to create a software company to solve all the above issues and I even convinced myself to make it fully open sourced such that anyone can contribute to this mission of digitising the processes and operations in the Agriculture businesses with a focus on the upper level of the supply chain. At Jani, we believe that agribusinesses can increase their impact in terms of revenue, farmers reached, and even the size of the produce if they adapt software and AI in their workflow.
So if you find the above problems relatable to your company, you can book a call with us and we will be happy to hear you out. Or if you want a custom software made specifically for your business and your business alone, we are happy to work with you so that you can focus on the core operations of your business.
