Some of the key challenges are:
1) Building a inclusive model (serving end to end need of rural & urban poor)
2) Defining long term benefits and scalability (Plan global and act local)
3) Last mile reach in technology (IVR, Mobile & web)
4) Integrating the model with various stakeholders at mutual benefit
In case of our PRIDE model:
Some of the challenges are Securing funding for PRIDE™, Farmers’ willingness to change, Backlash from existing dealers, Government policy changes and Social issues
How do you avoid corporate capture of farmers in that case? Also how do you ensure that the most poor farmers are able to participate rather than the better educated and 'market ready'? These are the most difficult but the most in need of stepping up out of the bottom layer.
Sorry to take you back Alexa but what are some of your strategies to include women more into the major job/ employment market or production cycles?
For the rural poor, one of the biggest challenges is distribution. Once you develop an amazing product or service for the BoP, how do you actually get it within walking distance of where they live? There are some amazing low-cost solar lights that have been designed in the last few years, but all solar companies face the challenge of how to distribute their lights. In agriculture, there are excellent high-yield seeds and high-quality fertilizers available, but it's a huge logistics challenge to get that seed and fertilizer deep out into the rural areas where farmers need it most. One Acre Fund has developed a rural distribution network to serve 180,000 smallholder farmers, and we receive tons of inquiries from people who have developed energy and health products who want to know if they can use our distribution network! This shows us how challenging it is to develop a rural distribution network that is scalable.
Stephanie, PRIDE is provide in our online showcase here: http://designexpo.businessfightspoverty.org/design-expo-showcase/progressive-rural-integrated-digital-enterprise-pride/
Welcome!
Vincent, we have found that farmers are willing to pay for extension services if they are bundled with credit. However, if extension services are delivered alone, farmers do not seem willing to pay.
Thanks Alexa for raising the issue of involving women. I'd like your thoughts on the UK Government supported New Alliance for food security in Africa which is trying to link corporate heavyweights with smallholder farmers in Africa and in particular trying to build far stronger models of female economic empowerment addressing both the role and potential of women in workforces and supply chains.
Thanks for great conversation! Let's move on to what I think is a critical issue - that cuts across much of what we've been talking about this week: gender.
Q3: How important is gender in the success or otherwise of some of the marketing and distribution models?
Very interesting. What is the best way to create that demand channel so that farmers know how to change the crops that they produce to meet demand of large buyers? A good flow of information is important--how does it work in the field?
PRIDE™ system, a collective group like a Co-operative or a Farmer Producer Company is the central channel through which various Business and Agricultural activities are carried out. This collective group is generally an entity that operates on the field to connect various organizations like Agri-input industries, Food processing industries, Government organizations, Financial institutions, Agricultural machinery industry, and the stakeholders. In addition, they also trade in large quantities collectively associating with all the farmers (stakeholders). Managing this entity manually is very difficult considering the diversity and distribution of every end consumer, producer, partner and stakeholder.
It is to this necessity that the mKRISHI® platform was designed by TCS to improve the operational efficiency and performance of these entities that are critical to the working of the rural collective enterprise ecosystem. This involves professional and optimized management of resources, grouping of growers, forward (market) linkages, backward (Agri-inputs and credit) linkages, provision of access to advisory or consultancy information, improving data visibility and enabling Data Analytics in such an unorganized unstructured sector. All these are possible with the power of the mKRISHI® platform. Operational optimization can be achieved and the collective enterprise’s performance can be improved multi-fold so that it can be effectively converted into a PRIDE™.
Living Blue sounds great Alexa. Do they sell in the UK? I agree that the BoP discussion does tend to focus on selling products to rather than buying products from the BoP customers... In my experience - particularly with food production - it is better for the poorest farmers to focus on production for the local markets in the first instance. It is a long way to go to get into export production, and there are great profits to be made in local and national markets, especially with growing urbanisation.
Exactly for the same reason, mKRISHI® platform was designed by TCS to improve the operational efficiency and performance of these entities that are critical to the working of the rural collective enterprise ecosystem. This involves professional and optimized management of resources, grouping of growers, forward (market) linkages, backward (Agri-inputs and credit) linkages, provision of access to advisory or consultancy information, improving data visibility and enabling Data Analytics in such an unorganized unstructured sector. All these are possible with the power of the mKRISHI® platform. Operational optimization can be achieved and the collective enterprise’s performance can be improved multi-fold so that it can be effectively converted into a PRIDE™.
In rural areas and in agriculture, in some regions, women account for most of the workforce but are not as productive because they don't have access to the necessary productive resources (land titles, access to water, inputs, knowledge). In agriculture, in addition to closing the yield gap we have to close the gender gap. The State of Food and Agriculture 2011 demonstrated that just giving women the same access as men to agricultural resources could increase production on women's farms in developing countries by 20 to 30 percent.
Business solutions can be developed to create this access, in particular through innovative approaches tailored to address the specific needs of women farmers. Credit and micro financing for rural women is a potent fuel for sustainable growth and development.
I'd suggest some of those challenges are:
Affordability and ease of operation and maintenance
Women friendly or gender neutral
Sustainability-economic, social and environmental
Will there be sufficient demand to make it commercially successful
How to meet demand while also respecting public health and social concerns (e.g. cigarettes and junk food meet demand but provide a poor quality and damaging product and service)
Require other parts of the system to function, especially infrastructure. Needs commitment at different levels especially Government to provide the infrastructural framework to make things work in situ. Otherwise must depend on lower level technology products and services that only require local resoures and infrastructure to function. E.g. off the grid energy, recycling of water, nutrients, local market functionality
As you rightly mentioned Stephanie, the distribution is an indispensable yet challenging element to reach out to the ultimate beneficiaries. IFC created the Lighting Africa program to bring in solar manufacturers and distributors together, which was then followed by the Lighting Asia program, which involves distribution of the solar products at the last mile. There are different institutions both non-profits and social enterprises addressing to this issue. Some call it an agent-led model and others identify it as a community service provider model. At the end of the day, we also need to look at the economic viability of that node (field agent/community service provider) who will facilitate distribution of the products and services. A balanced approach will be the key as the loss of one node will create a fallout of an entire community.
Women are 43% of the global agriculture force, so it's incredibly important to consider gender when thinking about marketing and distribution models. When delivering agriculture products and services, One Acre Fund has discovered that it's important to employ women who can train farmers of both genders. However, we think it's important that marketing and distribution models are offered to both men and women (and not exclusively women). When a distribution model is "women only," it can actually alienate men in the community, or provoke backlash. For that reason, One Acre Fund offers seed-and-fertilizer loans to both men and women (though in practice, over 60% of our clients are women).
BOP design needs to take into account not just how best to help women, but also how to to avoid harming them. Research shows that initiatives can backfire, either through violence, social isolation, or capture of income. Engaging men as advocates for women’s empowerment is crucial to avoid this. For a full article on this topic check out: http://goo.gl/J1BdxQ
You can find many case studies on our website relating to women's empowerment in rural areas, like this one on Agriculture and Enterprise Skills for Women Smallholder Farmers.
The fertilizer industry, for example, is looking for innovative solutions to facilitate women farmers’ access to key inputs, in particular to fertilizers. One such example comes from Turkey, where a fertilizer company adjusted its fertilizer packaging to a lower weight so that women could more easily transport the bags uphill to reach their field. In the Black Sea region, where tea plants are grown, the majority of agricultural workers are women. Tea plants are cultivated on the steep slopes of hills, up which it is very difficult to carry heavy items such as fertilizer bags. Fertilizer bags of 50 kilos were packaged and sold in that region. In 2010, the producer acknowledged the difficulty this posed for women rural workers and designed a system for delivering CAN (calcium ammonium nitrate) and the most commonly used compound fertilizer (25.5.10) in 25 kg bags to help women farmers by lightening their load. This change was not easy to implement. Everything from the design of the bag to the bag production line, as well as loading/unloading mechanisms, needed to be changed and required a significant investment. However, the initiative had an immediate quantifiable positive influence on women farmers’ working conditions and productivity.