NEO is among the winners of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Grand Challenge 'Smart Farming Innovations for Small-Scale Producers'. This was announced by the foundation at the end of October. Led by Equity Group Foundation, NEO will work with its Amersfoort-based colleagues at Weather Impact and Kenya-based companies Equity Bank, Equity Insurance Agency and Finserve Africa to create an innovative digital platform for farmers; EquiFarm.
The platform builds on the Equity Online-Agriculture platform and adds agricultural advisory services based on satellite imagery and weather information, among others. This information is important for disease and pest control, but also for optimal timing of planting, fertilising and harvesting crops, for example in the context of climate adaptation.
It also connects with financial service providers such as crop insurance companies and providers of micro-credits, e-vouchers and loans, with suppliers of agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertilisers and pesticides, and with market participants who will purchase the agricultural crops after harvest. In this way, it comes full circle, giving small-scale farmers access not only to cultivation advice, but also to the agricultural products being advised and the financial resources to pay for them. Moreover, thanks to the fact that farmers already have a picture at the beginning of a cropping season of who will buy their crop produce, they can rest assured that they will be able to repay their loans. This allows these farmers to grow their crop yield and income.
The project, which will run in 2022 and 2023, aims to initially connect two hundred thousand small-scale farmers on the platform, but has ambitions to grow this number to two million. There is also a particular focus on the role of women, who make up the majority of the workforce in Kenya's agricultural sector.
This is not the first time NEO has partnered with Equity Group Foundation and Weather Impact. Indeed, from 2015 to 2019, they already collaborated with each other within the CROPMON project, which aimed to use satellite imagery and other data to develop an information service to help farmers better adapt to climate change, use water, fertilisers and pesticides more efficiently, and increase crop yields and incomes. More information on this project can be found in a previous news release.
