AgriLegder can be used by a formal cooperative, by farmers, end buyers, cooperative banks, or a supply chain management The application has a simplified user experience for laymen, inputting data by just clicking a couple of buttons Freeman wants to expand the app and set up a full ecosystem of putting ethical sellers onto the platform, where the farmers can buy directly and even open up the platform into micro-lending Here is the transcript of the video. Emmanuel Daniel (ED): I’m very pleased to be able to have this chat with John Reyes Freeman. He’s a co-founder of an agricultural blockchain app called AgriLedger, which is now in pilot phase or proof-of-concept phase in Papua New Guinea, in Myanmar, and in Kenya. Basically, it’s to take the blockchain idea and create a whole community of information providers, and then, applications from there in all the countries where he’s got this pilot going. John, tell us a little bit more about AgriLedger. Using AgriLedger John Reyes Freeman (JF): AgriLedger came out of a hackathon in London last April. We were tasked with coming up with a solution that would help over one million people in 48 hours, so we thought, “What’s one part of the population that really needs help?” And we thought of farmers. Everybody seems to forget that all the food that we eat comes from farmers, and this is a segment of society that people just discount and forget. So, we built an application to help them have more truth and transparency, to give them financial inclusion, to provide them with recordkeeping of what they are doing, and also, to empower their community to give them access to more disposable income. ED: Now, what’s interesting is that basically, the way the app works is the farmers at the ground level input their production, their planning, their information, and then, that becomes part of an ecosystem. Who are the different users of AgriLedger at the moment? JF: AgriLedger can be used by a formal cooperative to help manage the cooperative members, which are the farmers. It can also be used by the farmers themselves to group together and make a loose cooperative among the farmers who want to work together. It can also be used by end buyers. It can be used by formal cooperative banks that work with farmers. Or, it can be used by supply chain management people. The future of AgriLedger ED: Actually, I’m excited about what you’re doing because the way I see it, if you think about how China evolved in the last 30 years – it became the world’s low-cost producer. So, lots of manufactured goods had to get out there – the information needed to get out there, and that’s what Alibaba turned out to be. It aggregated information on production of manufactured goods, and matched buyers and sellers. That same phenomenon exists at the agricultural level in all of the developing countries of the world – all of Africa, lots of Asia. And when you say “financial inclusion,” basically, it just struck me that the way in which Alibaba was successful on the website – in the future, the next phase is really to be successful in a shared ledger environment. Tell me a little bit more about the visibility, the user-friendliness of the data input aspect of AgriLedger, where it is now, and where you might be taking it to. JF: Okay. So, right now, the farmers are given – they use a mobile phone. The application is very simplified. It’s a couple of buttons. We made the user experience very simple for people who really don’t understand anything about technology. They can click a button, input how much that they’re planning to plant or how much they’ve harvested, and all of that is aggregated to the central location – be it a coop, be it a bank, be it the head of the group of farmers – and it lets them help plan. This also helps them to be able to sell for a better price, or to work together to buy in group fashion and sell in group fashion. Where we would like to see it go – we’ve made the simple app. Farmers are using it right now. We want to see it expand and make more of a full ecosystem of putting ethical sellers onto the platform so that the farmers can buy directly from the ethical seller, and they can get micro-loans from the seller to buy the input or the supplies and services that they need. The sellers get paid before the farmer gets paid for their crop when they harvest. We also want to open it up to micro-lending – ED: Yeah, I can see that happening. Yeah, go on. Micro-lending… JF: Micro-lending, crop insurance, and other tools and services that the farmers need right now but can’t get access to because they don’t have any of the records. ED: And, what you’re also discovering is in the parts of Kenya that you’re working with, you’ve discovered seed cucumber, and you know that there’s a demand for that somewhere else in the world. JF: So, in Papua New Guinea, we noticed that – ED: Oh, it was in Papua New Guinea… JF: It was in Papua New Guinea – that the local community had access to seed cucumbers, but they weren’t doing anything with them. Here in Asia, there’s a huge demand for seed cucumbers. And so, we’re empowering the local community to generate new sources of revenue. In this case, we’re helping them use our application to also have a supply chain management for the seed cucumbers and to be able to sell them abroad. That also can happen in other communities. In Kenya, we see a need for mechanisation, and so, we’re looking at ways to help the local community perform automated mechanisation and be able to do like an “Uber-scheduling” for them, also using our application. So, we’re looking at more than just keeping a small ledger for the farmers. We’re looking at ways to empower the community to do better themselves. ED: Honestly, I see that you will be able to do to the agri-world what Alibaba was able to do to the manufacturing world, and using this as a trusted platform, it’s just a matter of time before all the different players – whether it’s the cooperatives, the state agencies, the international agencies, the distributors, the end buyers, the financiers – all logging onto it, as long as the data feed is good. Where are you in terms of the funding of your initiative? Looking forward JF: We’re currently on our first round of funding. We’re about 60% subscribed, and we’re trying to close that funding round out. We’ve had interest for our next round through some large organisations. We’re just at a smaller scale where we need social impact investors right now, investors who really get what we’re doing and how we’re trying to help communities at the same time that we are operating a for-profit company. Going forward, we do want to try to work with various philanthropies and philanthropic organisations, especially the philanthropic arms of banks, to help. ED: I don’t know why any agri-initiative has to go the philanthropy route or the not-for-profit route. If anything, I think that the critical success factor is simplicity, visibility, and richness of data. I think the ecosystem – JF: Simplicity is the key, but most investors do not understand agriculture. This is a segment of the world where nobody gets it, and so, for an investor, they are looking at it to fit the same model as something in tech, or something in manufacturing, something in hardware. Agriculture doesn’t fit that model. So, that’s where – you don’t really see initiatives and a lot of investment into agri, it’s because investors don’t understand it. ED: John, I’m really excited to have met you. I think that Alibaba is so 1990’s, that an initiative like this brings life to the ledger concept, and I’d like to be able to see you succeed. JF: Thank you for taking your time and meeting me in Singapore.
