The COVID-19 pandemic has seen a significant increase in the use of e-commerce in all sectors of the economy, and the region’s farmers are of the view that the pandemic has given them the opportunity to take it further in their field of endeavour.
This was the consensus of four young Caribbean entrepreneurs in agri-business as they addressed the tenth in a series of webinars hosted by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) on “Food production and marketing in a digital era: Challenges and Opportunities for the Caribbean.”
Keithlin Caroo, the founder of Helen’s Daughters, a non-profit organisation that assists primarily female farmers in St. Lucia, said: “E-commerce has come a long way in the Caribbean and since COVID-19 there has been a jump in demand for cashless payment in agriculture and contactless services and there has been a surge in agricultural entrepreneurs doing this.
“Thirty-two per cent of the sales through our platform came from overseas, and we had customers from as far away as Belgium. We have piloted this initiative to Dominica, we are launching in Kenya tomorrow and we are also taking it to St Lucia.”
Harewood told the webinar that Farm Finders Global’s experience during the pandemic here has enabled them to create a model that can be easily modified to suit market conditions in different countries.
Keron Bascombe, the creator of Tech 4 Agri in Trinidad and Tobago, who started a blog on agricultural matters in 2011, has seen many farmers using the messaging app WhatsApp and social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to market their produce.
“Marketing is a high cost normally, but using social media tools this cost can be lowered, so farmers can take advantage of this to sell ideas to their followers and customers on a regular basis.”
Jamaican entrepreneur Danelia Doyle has established a blockchain company called Farm Credibly, which is aimed at helping farmers to develop a platform through which they can not only sell their products but also build up a credit score which will enable them to access financing to bolster their operations.
“We are leveraging blockchain as a digital footprint, so an investor will get real-time updates on what is going on with a farm, the status of their investment, and farmers can input information into the system via their phones, and this should increase their viability.”
So far, two financial institutions in Jamaica had expressed an interest in getting on board with her system, she said.