Nigerian startup, Alosfarm, has begun beta-testing a new big data platform solution for small farm holders. Pegged as Datafarm, the new platform will allow farmers to share real time market information and price changes directly with one another.
#wennovationfcmbdemoday2018
Alosfarm, a startup helping small scale farmers get access to microcredit, delivering their pitch. #Agritech2018 #DemoDay pic.twitter.com/DCDEv2pDhh— Wennovation Hub (@wennovation) August 27, 2018
Founded in December 2017, Alosfarm is an AgriTech startup providing go-to-market solutions for smallholder farmers and businesses in the post-harvest agro value chain. Banking on technology and the Internet, the startup developed a platform that allows small farmers to easily sell their produce.
“While there is so much effort going into enticing farmers to buy better farm machinery, fertilizers and seeds, very few people are talking about how to help them sell their farm produce and guide them in the farm process,” says Faith Onyenwenu of Alosfarm.
Targeted at rural and small farm holders, the platform aims to address food security challenges. Its target is to reduce food wastage in the country from the average 30% to less than 5% over time.
We are focused on increasing the value to both the farmers and our business customers while optimizing the huge wastage of food in the chain from farm to the table through our smart mechanism.
The company now also specializes in providing extension services to farmers as it tries to get them to increase their yields while addressing productivity issues.
Alosfarm Field-Testing Datafarm
With the new Datafarm solution, the startup has taken its efforts up by some levels.
Developed as a farm-to-farm digital solution, Datafarm provides real-time market information both offline (via SMS) and online. This is an interesting niche since most farmers are still very much offline.
Nigerian agri-tech startup Alosfarm has begun beta testing its new big data system and platform! https://t.co/51k7FtpDJI pic.twitter.com/1MTkEi4UiW
— CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture (@CGIAR_Data) August 28, 2018
Still, the goal of the platform is to provide all farmers in the country with the needed information, the company says. “We think that every farmer deserves equal access to information and that if they, the farmers, could get real information and share their agronomic precision data with one another, they could all make better decisions on seeds and agronomics,” Alosfarm said.
According to its website, Datafarm does more than just send information. Datafarm is backed by big data and analytics services to give farmers more personalized information on demand.
Now, how the data personalization works is not exactly clear. However, the company did share that Datafarm provides customers with information about seeds, soil fertility, soil type and other agronomic data.
Although the platform is still in beta, the company expects a full rollout of Datafarm later this year.
