 Hello everyone. My name is Emily Pollack and I'm a researcher at the IAED. Great that so many people could join us today, especially under the current global circumstances and I'm sure many people are attending from less than usual situations. Some people may have signed up prior to changes that have taken place but great that many people have managed to join. We will be recording this and we'll be putting out a note afterwards on the presentations and discussion. But first I'd like to welcome you all to this fourth webinar in a series that we're running. This is a series on approaches to empowering producers in commercial agriculture. It's a series supported by a four-year project led by IAED but in collaboration with partners in Nepal and Malawi and is financially supported by the UK DFID under the commercial agriculture for small holders and agribusiness program or CASA. So welcome everyone. A key part of this endeavor is gathering evidence from around the world and testing approaches on how producers in challenging situations are exercising agency, are finding sources of empowerment to address challenges in their value chain relations, in their market relations. So for example we're gathering experiences, insights into different approaches to addressing information and power symmetries, approaches that support producers to be in the driving seats or at least to be engaging and interacting with public and private sector actors from a position of strength. So in light of that as the background we're very pleased to be hosting today a group of panelists who are going to share their experiences of the e-granary platform that is aiming to serve East African farmers and you'll hear hear about that directly from the speakers. e-granary was inspired by a similar platform in India, it was established to create strong and reliable market linkages as well as key services in one space, one package and a model that stays in that through a model that stays in the hands of producer organizations to some extent. So I won't say any more on e-granary, my understanding it's still in relatively early days but have come a long way and have many lessons that have been learned and lessons to share and we felt that this warranted sharing this experience more widely. I'm sure the those involved directly would also benefit sharing and exchanging with others so we'd like to bring you this webinar in the spirit very much of mutual exchange and learning on a global scale about what might work well, what can work well, what can we do more of, what can we do differently, how do we overcome some of the really challenging barriers and exploit new opportunities in market systems from the perspective of producers. So without further ado I'd like to introduce our panel who will take you through the key components, the progress to date, the challenges and the lessons for others. Once the panelists have shared with us their perspectives and their experiences we'll have a Q&A discussion and this discussion session and for that we welcome comments and questions. I believe in the Q&A box and IAD on our side will manage those directing them to the panelists in turn as relevant and perhaps we can start with mainly questions and comments in response to what we've heard and then we can move on to more general sharing and relevant experiences and we very much encourage that so even if it's in this short window that we have together flagging things for other people to explore following the webinar and we can stay connected through other means so please do use that opportunity to really exchange. So the speakers we have firstly Steven Maturi will give us an overview presentation. Steven is the Executive Director of the East African Farmers Federation, he's also CEO of eGranery. The EAFF is a regional network of farmer, national farmer unions, federations and cooperatives in 10 countries and he'll tell you more about eGranery. Following that overview from Steven we'll hear from three panelists who are connected to the platform in some way and hear comments from them from their perspectives. Firstly we'll hear from Daniel Nyaga who is a farmer in Kenya who's been interacting with the platform in Kenya and then Giles Lewis who is a grain and oil seed trader in East Africa at ETG which is a leading integrated agricultural supply chain group with operating entities across 40 countries covering procurement, warehousing, processing and or manufacturing and finished with finished goods and also in transporting and distributing products. And then we'll move to Caroline, Caroline Kariuki who is a project manager at Vision Fund Kenya. Vision Fund is a microfinance institution that aims to offer effective credit as well as economic empowerment through business support for rural communities and we'll hear from Caroline how Vision Fund has been involved and engaged with eGranery. So we're very honored to have these speakers join us and bring their experiences together in this session particularly in turbulent times. We appreciate people being able to make time and be available when there's a lot of changes happening and we look forward to hearing their perspectives. So I'll hand over now I can see this presentation is ready hand over now to to Steven. Yeah so my name is Steven Mosheri I'm the Chief Executive Officer and I'll run you through a couple of slides that you've prepared for this particular engagement and next is a context content of my presentations. Next slide. Yeah so why are we talking about digitization or digitizing agriculture? One or the major challenges they have in Africa is that agriculture is so fragmented and fragmentation lies in between farmers in between the organizations and along the value chain and it's only through a virtual platform that you can actually be able to bring together all these activities and that's what we've actually done with our eGranery where we're able to aggregate farmers for input markets output markets and services and here we include finance mechanization and extension. Next so agriculture is faced by many many challenges and we thought these two actually stood out one that there's low collective action by farmers and two that there's lack of data on farming and under the issues of collective action due to that weakness a lot of farmers have challenges in jointly marketing jointly procuring of course due to fragmentation there's a challenge of access or provision of services is a challenge to actually have effective and efficient technology uptake that again brings challenges of building strong partnerships and of course value addition with respect to lack of data these are major challenge because it affects both policymakers as well as investors and we feel that due to that challenge we Africa's lagging behind in terms of attracting innovative investments in finance in value addition in advisory services and that has an impact on policy next but when we ventured on building the eGranery we looked at the typical profile of a farmer and one thing about Kenya where we started is that one there's massive mobile penetration most of the farmers are on mobile money I think you'll know about M-Pesa which is globally known most of the other population are actually farmers and about 60 percent of farmers are actually in cooperatives of self-employed groups so we try to look at how we would address four major issues which they actually face one was markets in terms of reliability and consistency finance and insurance in terms of inclusivity resources who are challenges in terms of access to certified inputs you know properly pricing labor as well as appropriate equipment and of course it was a big challenge of knowledge due to the fact that a lot of knowledge asymmetry and it was a challenge in terms of delivering this through extension and otherwise next so the slide before takes jump slide before please yeah thank you so what are we going to achieve with the eGranery the eGranery is unique because one is led by farmers most of the most of the e platforms are not led by a farmer organization and it brings together at least four services brings four services in one so the underlying proposition on the eGranery is that the ecosystem that we build actually benefits everybody and here for example if you start with a farmer one is that the insurance of the farmer gets a price and the best we can the best price they're able to access certified inputs and you're able to work with financial institutions to tailor make financial solutions on this aspect farmers have to actually be formally organized and have to have at least expertise in the value chain they actually engage in for financial institutions we allow them to have access to what we would call the risk farmers and the idea is that whatever loan product or credit product we build is actually based on because we work on this you know every season so there's an inclination towards it being based on income and of course because we're using groups you know there's a lot of group approach to that in terms of reducing risk and we try to ensure that the financial product actually is bundled so it covers the cost of inputs or covers the cost of insurance premium and to some extent or in the future services around mechanization and so on and this loan we actually negotiate it on behalf of the farmer we respect the buyer we try to ensure that they actually have access to a quality product that can actually be traceable we actually have traceability on our system and when it comes to pricing we actually negotiate on these prices with and on behalf of the farmer next so in building a platform there are certain things that we observed one that technology is not a single bullet especially in agriculture and you need to build this tech on a sound and feasible business plan there's need to invest on relationships that are non-tech you know for for architecture to work because of the very many moving parts and the many partnerships that you're actually building you have to really work on partnerships within the farmers themselves between the organizations with other actors and so on the business model has to have a market orientation we try to work a lot from the market end towards towards the farmer because they just make business sense when you're actually proposing this to the farm then the idea at the end of it is that we generate data and this data actually helps us in terms of we do a lot of work on policy but also it helps us in terms of negotiating better engagement with off-takers and other actors who are actually invited to the plant next next so this next line actually shows a basic model I know we've tried not to put a very complex one but basically what happens is that the equally more or less aggregates everybody so we start off with groups that are actually organized we ensure that they actually are able then to access bulk in bulk procurement of inputs so we're able to get up about quantity discount we able then to tailor make extension whether the beginning of the season or during the season they're able to negotiate for them services whether it's equipment leasing whether it's a microfinance whether it's post-harvest services and all this has to come under contract and like I said earlier we use all this to actually help us in policy we advocate along all those areas that I've actually managed next so currently we have about 260,000 farmers 214 Kenya 15,000 in Uganda 5,000 in Rwanda dealing with all sorts of cereals and grains we are currently reviewing our service delivery model in partnership with the Institute of Sustainable Development I think the biggest challenge so far and I think is the biggest challenge in agriculture has always been access to finance and I think the challenge we faced was trying to you know get the big banks on board but you're lucky that visual fund actually agreed to work with us and the challenge I think at the onset when you say providing this this support had been the collateral value the request was 20 percent from the farmers and 20 percent from here that's 40 percent of the loan I know with time we've been able to negotiate this based on the performance of the farmers and of course other child other issues and now it's 10 percent of the farmer in Uganda it's 14 percent in terms of collateral demand the interest is also high I know we've been dealing with 36 percent but again that has been negotiated and I think my colleague Karoline is here and that is falling to about 24-25 percent so like I said so far only the microfinance stations are virtually shown interest in working with us next so what are the challenges what are the other challenges that we faced now we've opened up in Uganda and like I mentioned and it's been a challenge just setting up it took us about eight months and we needed to do you know regulatory studies as well as looking at competitors and what they're actually doing and many things around the studies it took time for just setup we had to acquire what you call the unstructured supplementary service data usd acquisition which again requires it's a security issue you have to be assessed by security apparatus of the country of course setting up the partners and of course the HR second thing is a farmer coordination again you realize within groups is a lot of heterogeneity you know so going to get the homogeneity around it so that you can have actually have homogeneous data also takes a bit of time synchronizing partners of course create a lot of delays like you've seen we have almost four or five kind of partners from inputs to services to all that and you have to synchronize all this issues of quality of product we are having climate change challenges affecting you know us during harvest high moisture for talks and so on price fluctuations in the region we come from their challenges in government sets pricing sometimes you have market glass and you really need to understand all this of course repayment by the farmers I think you've seen the cost of interest is quite high cost of money is high but again coupled with climate change and issues of governance within the groups again that contributes to the payment defaults next and these I think is the second last slide so what are the other lessons you've learned one that I think the biggest challenge that farmers face among the other challenges is access to markets and certified input and I think we've tried to address this with our platform and you've actually seen a lot of positive response from our members important lessons include the mains procurement like you've had with you with ETG which works with many markets and it's important to understand how they do their procurement so that it informs how we plan our production of course climate change has been a challenge and we've been working through with the insurance partners and the credit partners to ensure that we innovate throughout the seasons because the issue of group guarantee the reason why you work with groups and that's why when we recruit the farmers we use a 28 approach they would convince 20 they would then convince the remaining 80 bundling all services to reduce transaction costs over time it means if you bundle the inputs the inputs the other services in between the insurance then it will become cheaper for the farm and then the importance of having farmers organized into groups because this helps in terms of partnership mobilization the actual partners actually see value in engaging in large groups you put them to negotiate better terms when you're doing public procurement of inputs among many others when it comes to credit farmers are actually ready to pay back you but they are actually properly priced and structured when it comes to insurance of course now with the challenges of climate change farmers are demanding insurance however they actually wanted to be also priced well and then and then the reason why we are trying to innovate a lot around you know bundling and I think the next one is the last one next slide which shows all our partners and I want to thank those who are actually in the panel the farmer Daniel etg and vision fund thank you thank you thank you so much Stephen I'm not going to ask Caroline to unmute her microphone and share her quick remarks in relation to Stephen's presentation Caroline over to you okay hi everyone my name is Caroline karaoke I work for vision fund Kenya vision fund is a microfinance that is affiliated to our vision and we offer financial support to farmers and small hold for two small holder farmers and entrepreneurs just like Steve has said we are in partnership with a granary to be able to empower the small holder farmer and under this partnership what we do is that we offer financial services and we offer a product called input financing input financing inter burden product where we offer certified input that is crop insurance and there is also life insurance and the reason why we have a budget product is so that our small holder farmers can be able to to benefit from this particular product because we know that sometimes the small holder farmer if not supported financially they are not able to get value for their money and in Kenya many people are small holder farmers since the highest contributor to the country's GDP is through agriculture so this product we give due to climate change we are able to to cushion ourselves and that's how we offer crop insurance in every season every input financing loan we give there has to be a crop insurance and also life insurance where we protect the farmer in case the farmer is unwell and they are hospitalized then the insurance comes on board and pays the loan for the farmer for that particular period that the client is hospitalized also in case a client loses a spouse or a child who is below 18 18 years old insurance comes on board and supports the client with some check just to to to show that vision fund cares you know and also if a client when the client has this input financing loan and in case they die insurance covers the risk so we are not we don't go back to the family to ask for our fine our money so how we do this is through group lending so e-grenary helps us to mobilize farmers through their platform and the farmers once they register with e-grenary then they we register them now to vision fund Kenya we offer them trainings that is financial literacy training and e-grenary also trains them on good farm practices and we do this in partnership with them and also in partnership with insurance because the the organization that offers insurance on behalf of vision fund they also comes on board and trains the farmer under the advantages of having insurance and so this farmer in a group once they are trained then we give them the leeway to choose whether they want to go ahead and take the input financing loan or not and most of them really appreciate that they are able to be given this financial service from vision fund Kenya since most of these big banks they don't to bank on the small holder farmer so vision fund has gone ahead and taken the risk of empowering this small holder farmer back in the village in Kenya to be able to to farm and this has really given us it has been able to to allow the small holder farmer to be able to make get value for their money because once we give them we we offer them the the input financing they are able to farm bigger pieces of land than what they've been farming before they were able to access finance finances and this also helps them to to to produce more and hence there is an increase in source of income for for this small holder farmer so our product just like I've said it's a bad product and what we are doing is that we are offering a net to end financial solution for the small holder farmer so once e-granary mobilizes the farmer we come on board and offer financial training and after that we offer the input financing we don't give them cash we give it in kind this means we we have as an input supplier who is who we pay to and then the farmer goes and collects the input from them this allows the farmer to be able to access certified certified seeds and this leads to increase of production then once the the client takes that input financing we work with the farmer from planting to harvesting and up to aggregation and of taking and we also through e-granary we've been able to find market for the small holder farmer that is through the partnership that we have with e-granary and this has been very helpful to the small holder farmer since most of these farmers they know how to farm but the main challenge is the getting finances to to be able to do the farming and also getting market because in Kenya we find that the brokers we have brokers who wait for for the crop to to to be harvested and then they go and buy from the farmer at a very lower rate but once we've gotten we've got market for this produce for our farmers then they're able to get a good price that is better than what they get from the brokers in the in the field so this has really made a big difference in terms of us being able to impact the small holder farmer back in the village since they're able to get the finances and also get a proper market for their for their crop um so that's what vision fund has been involved in with e-granary it's been a very helpful partnership because we as vision fund we've been able to reach more farmers than we than we did before we got it to partnership e-granary thank you very much thank you so much Caroline um I will now ask Daniel if you want to also share your quick remarks five minutes maybe you would need to unmute your microphone Daniel yes thank you very much for the contribution which has been done by Caroline and Mochili it is true that e-granary has uh assistance farmers very much because they have been uh they have been uh forefront because they are they are they are giving credit to our farmers and uh farm input uh plus training our farmers now my question to them is because now we have increased our productivity uh how can we how can how can we uh move forward by having these uh failure listening equipment so that we can uh failure hand our our our produce secondly I want to thank Mr. Caroline, Manda Mochilain because of the financing lighting out they have financed our groups and the farmers right now we have uh uh planting materials in our stores waiting to plant now mine is congratulating them for the work they are doing and hoping that we are moving forward so I don't uh much to say but mine is congratulating them for the work they are doing to the farmers thank you very much thank you so much Daniel yes um Giles would you like to share your quick remarks yeah hi everyone um I work for ETG as a grain and all seed trader um so I've been heading up the relationship between ETG and EFF and the e-granary platform um so I was just going to give you a bit of a background perhaps on ETG and what we do um so ETG has been present for about 50 years with its foundations in Kenya now operating in over 40 countries predominantly countries in Africa but we also operate in major um agriculture markets in the US and Canada and Australia um so I ever see the East Africa grain and all seed trading books so that includes maize, soya beans and any other grains or all seeds um ETG is one of the leading fertilizer um traders on the continent and also one of the largest maize originators in Africa obviously maize being a staple food in Africa it's a very important commodity um so I think the relationship started um with historical relationships between EFF and ETG um obviously our brand of fertilizer was known in the market and uh they were looking for a partner to come in come on board and and ETG's unique position is that we are able to offer a two-way supply chain so by providing inputs fertilizer seeds agrochemicals while also buying back farmers crops so in Kenya we have three major buying points two located in the main growing regions Eldret and Katali and one main center in Nairobi those points are used for for both selling inputs and also buying back farmers crops so the discussions began and our contract was set up with the E-granary whereby we provided fertilizers and agreed price delivered to their various distribution points and at the end of the season based on a yield prediction model we priced up a off-take contract for a set number of tons at a minimum price um very few aggregators we're aware of are able to offer a minimum price especially on a volatile price commodity such as maize however we understand the importance of this in order to build trust within the value chain and also giving financial institutions comfort to provide finance um so we we based our pricing on a number of different factors including the previous years government minimum buying price um and over the years we will obviously tailor make this to ensure that the farmers do not get disappointed at harvest time while we put in a minimum price we also update EFF on a weekly or even daily basis on our prices um so if the prices go up we pay that to the farm if the prices go down the same so we're completely transparent for us um the advantage is that we are leveraging a lot more of of our sort of a fertilizer supply chain historically obviously we've been the two businesses have been fairly separate so that's why we want to work with the likes of EFF and co-ops because they are very powerful on the ground presence in places like Kenya where value chains are often very fragmented and it's a very relationship driven value chain so we value that immensely with EFF and we look forward to continuing it going forward both as Daniel says he's increasing his yields but also looking at other crops um where you know the margins might be higher um and as Daniel says there might be opportunities for adding further value um and I think maybe I'll just throw in from my side that's probably going to be around proteins and soybean we're just trying to find the right varieties um suited to Kenya so yeah that's that's my five minutes thank you very much Giles and thank you to all the panelists um we are now going to move to the discussion session I've seen there are already quite a few questions listed just to say that um my name is Thierry Berger, I should have said that before I'm an associate at IIED um questions that we have so far uh include um beyond access to finance is there any experience of access to climate and other risk insurance schemes for small holder farmers and that's a question from Kelly from Fairtrade International um I don't know who wants to take this question Steven or Caroline? Yeah I think one of the things that we really like about the e-glower is that for the first time being led by farmers we are able to be ahead in terms of the kind of data we are actually able to collect and analyze the fact that we are linking up with all these other partners it helps us present you know I talked about a lobby in advocacy component that we actually work on based on the data we generate we are put in to engage different actors uh based on the challenges that farmers are actually facing in the field for example um when we had the the challenge of fall army warm for example with maize and the insurance companies dropped fall army warm as one of the uh areas uh the government then at that point for some reason or the other added some value added tax on on pesticides of course that now compounded with the fact that this is not covered by insurance increase the cost increase the cost of production and we're able to lobby government to zero rate the cost of pesticide but also we were able to then engage partners like ETG who are actually supplying one of the pesticides to to deal with this pest to actually be able to provide this at the reasonable cost to the farmers we're able to engage with governments at different levels at the sub-national level to actually see how they could you know put in place uh help us mitigate the cost of managing this pest so what I like about it is that it's a climate change is so dynamic you know today it's a fall army warm tomorrow is a low cost tomorrow is you know drought next time is something else uh when you do not have empirical evidence and and partners like you know ETG and vision fund and others that we have on the eclimate platform you cannot be able to lobby uh or push for improvement uh on um either cost of some of these products or policies that will actually make the environment uh conducive for the farmer to actually do production so I mean this is the benefit that I look at I look at in terms of long term but now that we are part of the data players you know we're able then to position ourselves to be able to present some of this empirical evidence and push you know some of the partners we have on board for example to to develop innovative innovative products uh one of the biggest challenges in having the insurance has been the capacity of some of the insurance companies with respect to agriculture uh you realize that they make more money in other sectors and less in agriculture and there has been some campaign within ourselves in my board I have one of the board members with a chair of one of the biggest insurance companies and we are actually trying to push him as well as the actor that is providing underwriting for our farmers to actually build the capacity in agriculture with respect to architecture within their own uh their own insurance company so it's a lot of things that are that happen behind behind the scenes um and uh we are lucky that we have the forefront with respect to it I don't know if I've answered the question thank you Stephen Caroline Giles or Daniel did you want to add anything else to that question oh I think Steve has has answered the question uh because um yeah there are there are some issues like insurance is very very tricky and all we can do as vision fund is to be able to just talk to our the insurance players to be able to you know to offer insurance for to our farmers so that they can be we can be able to mitigate some risks but sometimes we find that there are some perils that are not covered by the insurance but the government is is is is very keen when it comes to insurance and it's offering insurance subsidy for the various insurance product and we have been uh I think we might have uh lost Caroline momentarily Giles or Daniel did you want to say anything in relation to that point I'm sure Caroline can finish her comment a bit later if not no I think um yeah climate change is a very real problem and then farmers at the forefront of it the whole business is reliant on climate basically so it's a huge risk and I think it's good to see that the government are taking it seriously but I think there's a lot of private sector individuals who are also innovating and bringing new products to the table to assist as ETG separate from this project we also do offer insurance on our fertilizers and farmers which has been very successful so insurance is a key part and another big factor Steve mentioned earlier is control of markets and a lot of a lot of these African countries is very heavily influenced which which can often lead to unprecedented volatility in prices and also you know unprecedented food security issues so I think from the private sector side there's a there's a big push for free markets where possible and we hope that continues thank you Giles so there was a question about the challenges for the MFI to deploy sustainable financial product for digital financial for the value chains another one was knowing how the performance measurement is done and what are some of the some of the key performance indicators what are the initiatives which were considered to ensure sustainability of the intervention Steven yeah so um I think mine is probably the first question about uh sustainably financing activities around the e-granary I think that's that's what you said right if I didn't get it wrong um I think like you said earlier we are still at early stage and um when look at the e-granary uh there are so many uh components that will need financing as we go into the future I think at the moment we've looked at uh at inputs and it's all inputs we're looking at seeds we're looking at basal fertilizer top breast fertilizer we're looking at rhizobium for the soya beans we're looking at aflase for aflatoxin um so it's a whole array of things we have we actually try to stabilize when it comes to uh input financing uh we're also looking at the cost of the premiums uh so it becomes part of the bundle service I think those have you've really more or less uh got into them and we are trying to continuously stabilize continuous negotiate uh with the financial partners to ensure that um you know the costs are actually brought to a level that farmers are able to afford but we're also looking at other things we also want to add mechanization we want to add drying of maize we want to add irrigation equipment to be part of you know some of the things that can be financed we want to look at post harvest um services I think current mentioned about the challenges we have with brokers during harvest in the sense look at how can we have um working capital to help us be able to uh support the farmer um so then we don't have a challenge of you know i'm selling you know site selling uh and then beyond that we're also looking at other ways of financing you know we are looking at uh use of warehousing uh because in one of the slides I talked about some of the lessons you learned is um you know the way procurement is done from original perspective and there are times when there's there's there's a glut in the market because of um excess supplies from uh our neighboring countries or outside the region and we have to look at how we can actually be able to mitigate all this so I think we are we are still at at early early stages as some as you mentioned earlier but you're looking at these are the additional components of financing as as opportunities for finance so I think this this partnership is still early with vision fund with etg and others and we feel that as we continue solidifying as we continue having more farmers getting encouraged to get on board and and take these products then we'll then continuously also innovate and have more products available I know um vision fund may have an array of uh of financing instruments for different levels of value chain and uh maybe they're exercising that with other partners but we're also looking at how eventually those could also be brought on board I think for me that the part I can actually look at in terms of now overall sustainability um like I said we the whole thing has to be have a market orientation um if you're not clear about um how the market looks like looks like not clear about pricing uh because one of the things we do is that we work out what you call cost of production before we engage the farmer we have you know there's a value proposition to the farmer what is the cost of producing maize beans so I think whatever is it going to make you money how much acreage do you actually need to be to break even and be you know making profits so you know that that has to be very well done and worked out and every every season we try to check with the farmers to actually check whether whatever you presented as a cost of production actually relates to the actual cost of production they've actually they've actually during the season so you know those those components have to be there because they're also business people and uh if if if if then we don't have a market oriented approach then the whole thing cannot be sustainable thank you very much Stephen there are lots of um questions but I understand that nobody can actually see them apart from me and I'm very sorry about that it would be more helpful if everybody could see the questions um did we want to did we have any other thoughts about the three questions that was asked maybe Caroline or Daniel or Giles otherwise there's quite a few other points uh theory I would want to add on the challenges of MSI fund when it comes to funding uh smallholder farmer if I got that question right so vision fund is in the business of of offering financial solutions so what we do is that we we are we task ourselves or the management to be able to source for funds uh to be able to to sustain our business and to fund the smallholder farmer uh we we are more of an impact organization and for us we want to make sure that we are able to empower families to create jobs and incomes and also unlock potential for communities to derive and the only way we can do this is making sure that we fund that smallholder farmer to be able to to have sustainable income for themselves and their families and through that we are able to create impact so for us uh we source for funds and cheaper funds to be able to to fund the smallholder farmer and our plan or our strategy is to make sure that um our biggest portfolio is actually in agribusiness so we we want to make sure that the 50 percent of our portfolio is actually at the agribusiness because we are committed to be able to empower the smallholder farmer thank you theory thank you caroline jiles daniel did you want to add anything to these points no not from my side great um i see um salome asked the question which steven has already answered and i don't know whether everyone can see the answer so the question was what all the financial services does the granary give to the smallholder farmers in addition to the financial literacy and input financing also how do they ensure system the ability of the financial support according to the farmers and steven replied in writing we've started providing financial services for inputs seed fertilizer et cetera insurance premium we also want to add mechanization and post harvest for sustainability we have to ensure that the farmers are well trained understand the financial products and that we innovate as much as possible we also look for all the financial partners we can uh product support this form which is something that steven shared with us just now question from uh lees kirk are you using a warehouse receipt scheme when farmers deposit produce and leaking that into the produce providers of microfinance if so how is that technology working probably a question for steven yes let me respond to that at the moment you're working with on forward contracts although we work with etg so we believe they are more secure um because then when we sit with etg we even look at pricing and I think often we give the farmers is what they call a base price which is more or less like the lowest price the maize can can be bought at and we actually work out our cost of production based on that you know base price is worked pretty well I think the issues of warehouse and warehouse reciting I think can you just sign into law the warehouse reciting bill last year and I think the challenge you've heard in Kenya has been the number of warehouse operators you know they're not as many as you know probably it's thought however I think looking at our our case um warehousing would only be coming to four probably once in the year when we have all the glass as a result of production coming into four around Kenya and the neighbors because then we have a fall in pricing but I think most of the most of the year the prices are not are not bad and we get the best price like Giles say you actually get the most competitive price from from etg and based on the fact that we we procure fertilizer from them they are the largest supply of fertilizer at least in Kenya and the rest of the region they give us preference you know in terms of delivery of the final product so I think that's it I know we've not experimented much on one warehouse reciting it's it has its pros and cons and I think if there's something you probably want to work with etg on and the vision find you know going to the future but other women they don't practice that they do more more more work on thank you Stephen and since you were mentioning etg Giles did you want to say anything about this yeah Stephen says the warehouse reciting bill was passed last year but I think there is a lack of understanding and maybe there needs to be more clarification on how this will actually be employed because as far as I'm aware there is zero utilization of warehouse receipts in Kenya even with the law passed so I think you know it's probably you know a good idea but so in terms of practicalities on the ground I don't think it's quite been implemented but I mean as far as the private sector is concerned I think that open to more formalized delivery points etc for key commodities I just think it's still a work in progress in Kenya at the moment thank you Giles there's a question um saying that the activities implemented by vision found and e-granary are very similar to what a c e implements in Malawi some of the challenges are very similar specifically access to finance and access to markets I wanted to find out more about the model firstly how do the farmers repay the input loan do they receive finance on their yield allowing them to take time to aggregate more effectively to access better markets if so is there a warehouse receipt system in operation we've just this because I think the answer is not right now in Kenya that financial institutions used to collateral collateralized the loan and finally can you give more information on how you link farmers to markets do you have to overcome issues such as aggregating enough volume ensuring easy secure and quick payments to farmers and covering transport costs so I think we've already covered some of the issues including the warehouse receipt system but Steven Giles or Caroline Daniel do you want to have a good answer in this question okay I can answer on the repayment mode so what we do is that we give a balloon loan a balloon loan means that the client just pays a commitment fee at the beginning of the loan a commitment fee to show that he or she is interested in this product and every month but when from planting to harvesting the client only pays the interest component of the loan which is very small and then after after the crop matures we give them a grace period depending on the crop term because in Kenya we have some areas the crop that we are financing under this model is maize so maize in different regions in Kenya take different periods to mature so like if I take one region where maize takes nine months to mature that is from planting to harvesting the client is going to pay the interest component every month for the nine months then after harvesting we give them a grace period of three months where now the client harvest dries the maize aggregate and off takes so after off taking is when now the client pays the entire principle plus the remaining interest on the issue of collateral we don't ask for collateral for this particular product that is the input financing because the farmer we we depend wholly on the the the the the money that the client gets from this particular particular produce so what happens is that we use a farmer budget to be able to know how much will this client make at the end of the season so once we do that and we eat granary has been of helpful when it comes to the farmer budget because they have so much experience in this and they also have extension officers who are sorry agronomists who help them in this so they help us to know how much produce per acre that a farmer produces and we are able to know whether the farmer will make will make a profit and so we know that we are able now to tell how to price our loan and how much the client will make at the end of the season so we we are able to tell how much we will be able to fund this farmer and whether the client will be able to make a profit or not so we don't take any collateral for this particular product thank you Caroline I think Stephen you wanted to say something as well so so the thing is this um and I wanted to explain this the way we work with ETG is that we understand how they start the capacity of their of their trucks it falls between 24 and 28 metric tons so the way we work around it is that we plan our production around this kind of off-tech so it means that we have to ensure that because we're actually working with our members that we build hubs that can produce almost equal multiples of that off-tech so that helps us in terms of how it is actually off-taken and ETG actually collects at least 80 percent of whatever you produce is actually collected unless we're in an area where then they they have a challenge of delivering the truck but they first of all they deliver the inputs the fertilizer is actually delivered to the farmers for the fertilizer for the seeds and some of the pesticides we work with local agrovis so we have an arrangement and there's also a tributary between them and vision fund so that then based on the bulk procurement of either of all those then there's a quantity discount so that is the actual benefits to the farmer so that's how we ensure that that actually happens then we respect to access to markets like I said earlier we work from market to farm so we we have we have like a mother contract with ETG and then we design subcontracts with the groups which have this base or price of for example it's maize or soybean or something like that so based on that or on the strength of that then the farmer is actually assured that they actually have a price they can actually work with which has a possibility of going up based on the market price but also too that the product is actually going to be collected and I think with all the farmers you've actually worked with you have actually collected their product so in cases where maybe there's an overshoot for example of a couple of bugs and so on then we have a cost share on transport with ETG we actually get a provider and based on the price put that we we do that so so you see that maybe the off the overshoot will be maybe a small truck because then everything is everything else is in multiples of 28 metric times so of course it's not easy it's easy to say and present it but of course it's not easy to actually achieve that but some of the things we actually do to ensure that they actually achieve that is that they actually access certified inputs so that when we are doing our projections in terms of harvest then you actually as close as what is actually projected by the seed producer but if you're expecting 30 bugs or 25 bugs then you actually as close as 25 to 30 bugs as possible so then when we are then organizing logistics with ETG then you are as close to 28 or multiples of 28 metric times as close as possible so that's how we work and we have a large team you know I may oversee that but you have operations people we have economists but in the field other than just our team that goes to the field we have the vision fund team that also goes to the field we have the ETG team that also makes visits we are using an app where every every time there's a milestone for example with germination we actually take a photo that has GPS and we track so we do a random sample of the farmers and we track the production by those farmers but that not only helps us understand how first of all the crop population the crop establishment and even when we're doing the projections but it helps us in insurance because we've had a challenge sometime when we had compensation and we had a disagreement on you know what they call satellite data these are V crop cuts so that's how we came up with innovation of collecting our own visual data that has you know GPS markings so it means that if within a region we have a sample maybe a hundred farmers and you can actually be able to track how the maize was actually performing then we can actually be able to challenge a report that that says otherwise you know from an insurance plan so that's a bit some of the things we actually do thank you Stephen there was a question whether the facilities are available in Mauritius and Stephen said it's only in Kenya Ugon and Vonda but they can provide this in Mauritius as well a question I'd like to ask a panelist which is about whether the platform e-granary platform provides support to understand the social and environmental safeguards probably a question for Stephen so the way we do it thank you and I like the fact that I think Emily mentioned that we brought this from India in India it's a cooperative as a call if go Indian farmers fertilizer cooperative and one of the things they do on the extension is social and welfare you know related kind of messages as if I understood the question well so at the moment what we've done is that like we said we have allocated most of the messages that we are pushing are mainly agronomic messages however one of the things we actually want to do is based on the the quality of the data that we actually are receiving is to actually see how we can also start introducing you know other social and welfare related kind of messages but also because once in a while we have face-to-face meetings with the farmers that they can actually be incorporated as part of the trainings that information that you actually disseminate to the farmer so these are all things that are work in progress yeah great thank you as agricultural activity is very risky for FSP and I think that's farm safety partnerships did you support this FSP as to provide an adapted financial products tailored to the farmers needs and maybe I can throw another question in the mix so we answer them together though they're not necessarily related is there any experience that the panelists can share on pricing negotiating prices considering that the value chains operate in the liberal markets I tried to respond to that because we work with ETG and ETG is the major player in the grain markets so they have a better understanding on price movements and things like that and I think the time we sit down to negotiate the the best price is usually based on historical evidence from from their side and like I said we have a caveat on the contract that allows us to sell finally the maize at the best price and I can tell you for a fact that Gels is there we're able to even negotiate slightly higher than probably what they're offering at that point in time to the market and it's simply because of the relationship the fact that like I said which is a value out of the e-grenade you see we are aggregating farmers so it means that when ETG is going to look for maize they're not going they're not cost of logistics to look for this maize is reduced based on the fact that we are getting these farmers for it means that we are able then to negotiate even a slightly higher price based on the fact that you know you'll have lowered their cost of um it's a finder's fee they're finding finding the supply more or less so so it's the same thinking that we're actually saying even going forward when it comes to the bonds and the show runs and so on the fact that we are able then to aggregate these farmers reduce their cost of acquiring the client then we are able then to reduce the transaction cost and have probably a better product that is better priced for the farm I think as far as prices go so that's what I would actually say thank you thank you very much great another climate change related question is there the possibility for e-grenade to integrate farming activities with fish farming in order to guarantee more diversity and sustainability for farmers thank you amat um I know we presented these e-grenade ones to permanent secretaries under the africa union uh international beautiful animal resources and one of the things that the africa union asked us to look at was the possibility of developing something around livestock I know we're just coming out of a meeting we had alivisia and efat where we had a lot of discussion around the fisheries and the fish of hawks so I mean these are all areas we are looking at as potential ways we can actually use the e-grenade we have to probably call it something else different because the grenade is for grain but also we may need to design it differently because even for livestock based on what we actually want to achieve the kind of questions that the farmer has to fill in in terms of registration and otherwise we have to alter a lot of that so definitely it's an area we actually want to look at it's not easy to set them up they are quite expensive these e-platforms and it's even more expensive running it so I mean we have to look at the whole the whole area and actually see how we can design one for you know commodities outside of grain thank you thank you Steven anything else the other panelists would like to ask to address I have seen a question on whether vision fund offers financial services to other players in the agricultural value chain and what what I can say is yes we do because we are a financial institution and as I was starting I said we offer financial solutions to small holder farmers and micro entrepreneurs so any other player in the value chain may it be the aggravate may it be the buyers of the produce or the input suppliers we offer financial solutions to everyone in the in the in the value chain so yeah and we offer we do that as I said we offer solutions to small holder farmers in groups but for the players in the in the value chain like suppliers input suppliers we offer financial services to them as individuals thank you Caroline a and as we've already answered this one a question about traceability can Steven share experience with the crop such as beans what has been e-grinaries motivation to do traceability I think yes traceability I can answer that one very quickly I think one of the things that we have tried to ensure on the e-grinaries being above board so it means that during harvest was a worry of to ensure that all the product meets the quality requirements by the buyer and then above that for the purpose of the group we ensure that we have developed or at least designed a traceability code that has and you're actually able to trace the product right to the individual farmer this is for the purposes of payment but also because sometimes you know you may arrive today check the quality the beans are okay the maize is fine and then the maize is being collected tomorrow and someone snakes in you know a couple of bad bugs and these are fished out by etg or the buyer for that purpose so then we're able to tell that so-and-so is the one who actually had one incidence of soybeans where that actually happened and I remember Giles was you know really hard to me on phone when they receive that soybean from let's call Kisumu in Kenya so so traceability is important because it also creates issues of accountability and integrity yeah so when you're talking about groups and the group you know group governance then you know this this come to some great helps enhance the issues of group guarantee group you know so what do you realize that over time even a group themselves are able to single out farmers who are actually bringing maize that is either ungraded or beans that is either ungraded and is likely to actually spoil the entire consignment in that particular incidence when that so-and-so have been incident it actually affected other bugs and it was actually a cost to the group because the maize had to be transported the whole 500 kilometers back the farmers group at their own cost so and these are things that we actually understand so this is us to be on board so that then they see this knife along the valetian I think what we are trying to build on the ikrana is trust that when when when when e2g says i'm buying those 10 bugs they actually show that those 10 bugs meet one degrading quality and aspects the moisture aspects aflatoxin levels and all that and they're not expecting it to be to be below any of those whatever whatever standards we've actually been been presented to us and for the farmers we want a situation where when they put their 10 bugs to e2g they are short of the price and everything is actually going to be at the end of the day it's cost effective even to transport that maize because then if there's a problem with the quality then it's actually a cost again to the farmer so and because of the things we try to ensure and I think it has actually helped a lot because other than that incidence you've had you know major and significant improvement in quality and I think even Caroline can actually attribute to that most of the maize that is actually collected for the from the farmers is actually paid for thank you thank you Steven we're approaching the end of the webinar even though we started a bit late and I think we would be good to stop more or less on time there are lots of questions I wasn't able to to read but maybe there's one which I think has already been addressed but we're good to summarize a lot of the points that were made one from Ibaima you know what are the relevant factors that can help farmers have better prices I guess not an easy one to answer and I know you've already touched on those on this point but maybe a good way of as I said to summarize a bit what we said yes yeah I think obviously this partnership is meant that technically the EFF farmers have been getting a better price because they're dealing direct with the end buyer which is us normally in this market it's being done through middlemen who often offer a lower price compared to the market price in order to make their margin and while we can criticize them they play an important role in the whole value chain I think you know strength is something like this partnership has is that that perhaps other individual farmers working with brokers don't is that we are working in a cohesive unit such that they're getting financing inputs and an agreed operating price and there's probably a lot less stress involved in the from the farmers perspective and they they know that their inputs will be there on time they know their inputs will be paid for they know that the EFF will provide technical assistance then on the ground if they have any issues climate change or unported tests and they know that ETG will come and collect their grain and pay them on time for it I think I think that probably summarizes you know what the whole the whole idea is about is as Steve says a trustworthy relationship that can hopefully continue to grow as we improve the concepts further thank you Giles any concluding remarks from um Daniel Caroline Steven maybe I could go first as my colleague the process is that okay yes and I want to apologize for all those who've asked questions and we were not able to answer unfortunately we only have one hour discussion yeah maybe if it is possible to get the questions some of them look very interesting uh and others I'll need some time to actually respond to them yes with a bit of response I think for me um digitization is the way to go I mean this is the way I look at it and if you really want to empower the farmer we have to ensure that we build a platforms that are able to generate data that farmers can actually use not only for decision making but also to help them engage in meaningful partnerships and also inform policy when I look at the our experience so far on the e-granary and yet we are just at the beginning the opportunities for the e-platform going forward are so massive I mean we are we are only talking about inputs uh and issuance at the moment but there's so much opportunity in logistics in value addition warehousing uh other investments in terms of policy advertising I mean it's it's passive and when when I look at even the opportunities from a regional perspective I know we have coronavirus now with all the challenges that it's it's presenting in terms of movement but just look at it from the point that Africa itself does not even trade with itself you know because of many many challenges most of which are based on distribution and then look at just handling the issue of distribution just a question of data you know if you have information about what is available where then we can always get you know an off-take a partner to actually be able to either finance or collect that particular product and place it to the market that you require it so I think it's important to look at how this unfolds I know it's important that farmers wherever they are in the continent in the world can actually take up this kind of an approach and be at the forefront towards you know development of such kind of platforms because at the end of the day there are ones who more or less control the value chain and I think if we are all organized if all farmers are organized it would make it very easy for all other partners along the value chain thank you thank you Steven Daniel did you want to say anything before we write up thank you yes please yes please thank you very much I want to say e-platform is a way to go because it is making a farmers to do evasion work and it helps us even to to have a quick market regages and it also it helps us to to to to be linked to finance institutions in this entity thank you very much thank you Daniel Caroline Giles any final thoughts so for me what I would like to say is that digitization is the way to go and it's it helps us to be able as a financial institution it has helped us to be able to get more numbers in terms of farmers than before we started this partnership so and also we are we are able to in our other products we are able to to disperse our loans very fast when it comes to digitization so I think it's it's the way to go for for Kenya and even for other countries and just like Steven said if other farmers would organize themselves and they're able to to use the e-platform when it comes to sourcing for market and and other services then I think it will be able to help to help very many people in this country and even other countries out there to be able to access services and since since the services they're able to get services when they are services are brought close to home you know via via digitization so thank you very much even for allowing me to be in this panel thank you thank you Caroline Giles any final thoughts no no I think my last comment was my thoughts but thank you very much great thank you in which case my colleague Emily Pollack is going to very quickly wrap up the webinar okay thank you I'd just like to say thank you to all the panelists but also all the participants for the webinar today and engaging actively on this really interesting topic I think we've really spanned the big picture context the questions the challenges and some of the much finer nuts and bolts and I think there's been a lot shared and a lot learned so thank you to all it's been great to hear different perspectives and different questions and as Thierry said apologies for questions that we haven't managed to get through in the time we've got we will think about how we can capture that as as Stephen had said he would like to be able to take the time to respond to some of those and perhaps we can integrate some of that into a piece looking at what we've been discussing and the lessons that have been learned and shared and so we will be preparing a blog and we will include the slides in that and we hope people will stay in touch there and and as we move forwards with Epic project and future webinars and exchanges on on this topic and following the webinar we'll also send a very quick survey to get feedback on the webinar this was a new format for us as well so thank you for patience with that the survey should take less than five minutes and it's always good particularly in this moment in time where almost everything has been conducted by zoom getting it right is really helpful to all out to be able to participate actively and meaningfully so we welcome feedback we hope everyone stays very safe and we stay connected and keep on with this work looking at how to support producers in their commercial agriculture from all our different perspectives so thank you to all the panelists and thank you to all the participants and we look forward to connecting as we move forward together thank you very much