BMGF Annual Conference announcement
Click HERE to watch the presentation.
The 2020 Grand Challenges Annual Meeting (19th – 21st October) is an annual event organized by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As part of this event the Ideas Marketplace offers researchers, companies, and project teams a platform to present their work to specialists and leaders in both the digital farming and crop analytics ecosystems.
eProd Solutions is proud to have been invited to showcase how its Supply Chain Management platform for the agricultural sector is pushing the boundaries of innovative digital small holder production systems. The eProd presentation will join three others in a sub-track entitled “Finance and Insurance Services” , moderated by Stewart Collis, Senior Program Officer, Digital Solutions, Agricultural Development at the foundation.
The Marketplace will occur during the second session of the 2020 Annual Meeting on Tuesday 20th October between 14:00 and 20:00 EAT . For more information please visit the Grand Challenges website or contact info@eprod-solutions.com.
Digital solutions for Supply Chain Management in the agricultural sector are more important than ever, especially now COVID-19 is making it even more difficult to source from small scale farmers. In collaboration with eProd Solutions the Africa Agribusiness Academy organizes a webinar to demonstrate practically various features of the eProd ERP platform. During a two hour webinar some of the topics covered will be: farmer and field registration (including capturing field GPS locations), field inspections, loan management (including credit scoring and automated repayment via product deliveries), produce collection, quality-based payment and produce traceability, reporting and M&E activities, communication with the farmers including automated weather forecast and production advise.
“The eProd team identified several key constraints that basically cripple field activities for the buyers from small scale producers in Africa”, according to Miss Erna Goudt, Client Relationship Manager at eProd Solutions, and speaker at the ICT4D webinar series. Due to the current crisis it has indeed become exceedingly difficult to conduct basic field operations, such as to register farmers and their fields. eProd can assist to collect farmer group, farmer and field profiles, field inspections, manage produce collections via local field staff and lead farmers. Secondly, gathering reliable data to monitor the field production via field inspections and survey data from farmers, has become very difficult and companies are in the dark regarding crop status and projecting yields. Thirdly, communicating with farmers has stopped or at least significantly reduced while the current situation requires continuation of extension services, sharing market price information, and updates on COVID-19 awareness. Fourth, following up on the buyers’ field staff’s activities is even more difficult than ever before. How to verify movements, accomplishments, etc? Finally, and probably the most criplling factor, there is lack of cash liquidity in the field for farmers to invest in field activities, farming inputs, etc. On one hand many buyers are not able to pay farners remotely via mobile money transfer or bank acocunt, and farmers can’t link up with financial institutions or can’t be checked for credit worthiness. How would buyers share credit risk information with financial institutions, automated loan repayment, tri-partite agreements, manage their input inventories without appropriate and affordable tools. Please participate in the upcoming webinar, part of the virtual edition of the ICT4D Conference and ongoing ICT4D webinar series, you will hear about low cost digital and mobile technologies to support farmers under these unprecedented circumstances.