The one who controls the access has the key

March 18, 2024
11:34 am
Manon Koningstein

In today´s digital world, for smallholder farmer groups to trade smoothly they must have real-time and direct access to their supply chain data. It is therefore that Progreso offers them capacity-building so that they do not need to go through any third party to have access to their data. However, since the amount of small-holder farmer groups that need to be supported in high-quality data management is too large for Progreso, as a sole small-scale NGO, to handle, Progreso has initiated a partnership with Solidaridad East and Central Africa (Solidaridad ECA).

“The one who controls access to data holds the keys to market access. However, it is not always easy for smaller producer organizations to digitize their operations, especially if they need to do it by themselves ¨, Federica Marra, Senior Product Owner Beyco

Solidaridad ECA is implementing the Reclaim Sustainability Project in Kenya to link farmers and workers to digital market intelligence platforms that strongly embed gender considerations to improve market information flow between farmers and other market actors for improved transparency in the value chain activities.

As mentioned by Leon Wakoli, Lead Software Developer for Solidaridad ECA: ´Currently, direct access to markets is one of the ways of disrupting the status quo in the value chain. Our producers depend on one outlet to ensure their coffee is exported, making the process flow very rigid, and, with many middlemen, producer organizations lose money in the supply chain. Linking this organization and capacitating them to ensure they export, through the Beyco platform, will disrupt the supply chain and ensure producer organizations earn more from the coffee they produce´.

Brian Masareka, Beyco Implementation officer Uganda and trainer, mentioned: ´By joining forces with the Solidaridad ECA team, Progreso can offer Kenyan coffee producers access to the Beyco platforms, knowing that they will be supported and followed-up by the experts from the Solidaridad ECA implementation team´.

Conducting the Beyco training

A first step in this partnership was a training conducted on February 15th and 16th, where Progreso and Solidaridad ECA collaborated for a Beyco and Beyco Farmer App training in Nakuru, Kenya.

The participants of the event were the representatives from the Kenya Coffee Producers Association (KCPA), Coffee Estate Processors Association(CEPA), Transolid Women in Coffee, 7 coffee cooperatives(Kambusu FCS, Solai Coffee FCS, Mutungati FCS, Kabati FCS, Komothai FCS, Gakundu FCS, Kiini FCS and Muroki FCS), 8 small and medium estate farmers and 3 youth farmers spread across coffee growing counties in Kenya. All of these were selected by Solidaridad ECA as the pilot group for the training and roll-out of the project.

Over the two days of the training, the participants were introduced to the Beyco platforms: the combination of the data collection App & Dashboard and the Beyco marketplace.

For the participants, one of the key elements of the training was the attention given to empowering coffee producers to export directly their green coffee beans, breaking years of traditional trading through many middlemen and brokers.

Using the Farmer App in the journey towards EUDR compliance

In addition, detailed attention was given to the role that the Farmer App might have in their compliance with the EUDR (European Union Deforestation-free Regulation). The participants especially appreciated the discussion of how this concerns the export of green coffee to Europe, on top of enabling a digital transition for their organizations.

Brian did warn the participants though that there, of course, is no guarantee that when you use the Beyco platforms you are automatically going to get market for your coffee as there are also other determining factors like quality and price.

However: ´one thing is certain, the EUDR will start to be implemented by January 2025, and a lot of producer organizations are not even prepared or aware of the requirements of the EUDR. So, already, by embracing the technology and gathering essential data, the farmer organizations are arming themselves for this change and when the opportunity to supply coffee with geodata to the EU market presents itself and they end up being successful, it wasn´t that their organizations were merely lucky; it´s because they were ready.´

As mentioned by trainers Federica and Brain, at the end of the training, there was a lot of positive energy in the room. This was reflected in the enthusiasm of the participants and how all the producers, both estates and cooperatives, are keen to start implementing the Beyco system before their 2024 harvest.

As mentioned by Leon Wakoli, Lead Software Developer for Solidaridad ECA: ´Leveraging this partnership, our goal as Solidaridad ECA is to ensure more farmers have a wide range of global customers with fair prices. We look forward to more collaboration to ensure farmers, through the cooperative setup, have easy access to markets, and access to financial services´.

With the final wise words of Brian: “Do what you are supposed to do and wait for the opportunity to come.”, both Progreso andSolidaridad ECA can look back on a successful pilot training and are hoping for more to come.