The Farmer at the Forefront

IQ Logistica’s focus for 2022

As Covid appears to be ebbing and flowing with less severity, I had the pleasure of attending a dinner with some friends last week. An eclectic mix of bankers, designers, and other entrepreneurs that I hadn’t sat down with in ages. Discussing the happenings at IQL, the question came up:

“can farmers really use your technology?”?

?It wasn’t a question of the user friendliness of the platform (it is user friendly, I promise), but more around the idea of adoption - is the agriculture sector ready to leave the age old methods of memory, cigarette boxes, and perhaps Excel for an agtech/insurtech/fintech platform like Farmers Friend??

My simple answer is of course; yes.?

Digital penetration and commerce adoption (mainly driven from the strict Covid lockdowns in 2020) saw the phone replace the wallet with banking, online purchasing, and communication all seeing notable increases. People's behaviours changed, which includes the farming community. While the farming population is not a one size fits all group, we see many customers wanting to consolidate the functions of many apps (pest advice, mapping, scheduling, and management) into one place. This is Farmers Friend.

The other factor that leads me to my simple answer is something that affects all farmers these days and that’s prices for products. Fertilizer prices have skyrocketed this year, almost tripling from last year. Petroleum based products have seen a massive increase while certainty around access to finance and insurance is in decline - this is for commercial as well as small farmers. To keep producing the food for our shelves, farmers need to reduce their cost to produce.

This problem is why the IQL team also chose to strongly focus on the services side of our business. In 2021, we launched a dedicated finance desk to provide production loans for our subscribers. This made even more sense because three of us are former agriculture bankers. Last month, we announced that IQ Logistica? would be acquiring an agriculture insurance underwriting management agency who works in partnership with Guardrisk and Swiss Re. We are in the process of onboarding and refining a select number of key agricultural products in the plant nutrition and fertilizer space to complement and support our business stable and offering, to help our farmers ensure success. Not only are we giving farmers the one place to manage and monitor their businesses, we are bringing the key products and services to them digitally, which will reduce their costs and speed up their delivery.?

?However like any other digital relationship - if you want the products and services, you have to create your digital footprint and safely collect your data. And while this can be somewhat of a learning curve, our farmers are starting to see the benefits of their digital identity and its benefits for the future, regardless of their relationship with IQL. We just happen to help farmers anticipate the future and make their farming operations resilient.?

?Admittedly, it’s early days for IQL and Farmers Friend. Since launching Farmers Friend in January however and if history (even recent Covid related history) is any guide; I believe the future is bright for Africa’s farmers as well as IQL when it comes to managing their farming operations and competitively priced agriculture related products and services initiated and delivered through our farm management platform.?

For more on our stable of products and initiatives for 2022 you can get in touch directly. I'd love to chat it out and work together to bring the Farmer to the forefront for us ALL! Pop me a mail: [email protected]