AGRITECH: Taking Advantage of Agricultural e-Commerce Platforms to Boost Your AgriBusiness.

The rapid growth of internet access and technology is gradually revolutionizing the landscape of agri-business. There is a consistent reach of internet access to especially the increasing young population of Nigeria. This has skyrocketed the number of internet users from 57.7m in 2014 to 115.9m in 2019.

Evolving away from oil in Nigeria, there has also been a sudden awakened awareness of doing agriculture in recent times. For once in a very long while, many of our youths feel passionate about going into agriculture and seeing it as a valuable business. This has given rise to the increase in our local rice production and other agricultural products and processing, which is very impressive.

Although, one of the biggest headaches the farmer still faces in the value chain is the easy access to varieties of inputs and marketing of their produce (Agro-marketing), with little or no one making emphasis about it. This is arguably the most important part of the value chain, as farmers tend to have the inability to make sales, access quality inputs, locate their customers, or break even at the point after harvest. Therefore, it has created a large vacuum space that needs to be addressed by the government especially, to place our agricultural sector as a force to be recognized in the world map.

For the customers too, the way they go about purchasing agricultural products is of great concern. Sometimes buyers have to travel far distances to get agricultural products; and getting the right quality may not be guaranteed, as they may be dealing with unregistered agents and middlemen. Also, various market prices cannot be compared because buyers do not have all the time and resources to visit every agricultural farm, except to deal with the same unregistered middlemen, who in turn inflates major product prices to suit their personal gain.

However, Agro E-commerce is slowly beginning to have a major impact on the agricultural sector to solve these problems. Ecommerce in itself, which is also known as electronic commerce, refers to the buying and selling of goods or services using the internet, and the transfer of money and data online to execute these transactions. Therefore, an agro ecommerce will focus majorly on selling of agricultural products and services.

Hence, the need for an electronic means of trading called Agro E-commerce, would help farmers and other buyers, make their appropriate business transactions online without stressing to locate the right producer with the right product, without inflated prices influenced by middleman agents. This helps to ensure the sales of quality input and output of farmers and consumers.

This new technology, which farmsquare.ng already adopts is incorporated into an Agriculture E-commerce system, to aid in increasing the farmers’ community online, buying of inputs and selling of locally produced products and more. This eventually improves the sales of agricultural products from farmers by connecting their produce to the next readily available buyer with ease online.

Here are the benefits farmers experience by visiting farmsquare.ng;

• They allow small farms to have access to the same markets as larger farms. That is, small farms can have instant access to both local and international markets.
• They are able to provide all kinds of inputs needed by the farmer to grow any particular kind of crop.
• They provide unique recommendations to farmers who request and visit them online more easily.
• Farmsquare ease stress and aches for both farmers and consumers through their personalized delivery system to every buyers location.
• Allows farmers and agro-vendors to sell online, reaching millions of internet users, which increases their opportunities with customers, suppliers and other farms.

In conclusion, I believe it’s time for farmers to embrace this infusion of Agricultural technology into their value chain model. This way agro stakeholders grow and improve the sector, by showing its importance in boosting the Nigerian economy, while catching up with the rest of the world in modern agriculture.