Can Bitcoin technology help farmers get a better deal?

BBC news reports that digital technology from apps to blockchain technology are opening new ways for farmers and smallholders to new ways of doing business.

The featured article focuses on one farmer, Take Muhammed Adams who is a cocoa farmer attested that technology run by commodities giant Olam has helped him improve his productivity and pest management.

The case of Olam is previewed as an avenue for digital initiatives used in agriculture, and they have done so for the past 18 months.

Olam apps allow farm products to be tracked from the farm to the markets and allows farmers to check cocoa prices and trade online.

Most farmers in Africa are unbanked and thus are excluded from the financial services, hence the rise of mobile financial services.

Blockchain can be an opportunity for such excluded communities, and the article gives reference to Russian farmers in Kolionovo who are already using the blockchain technology.

The farmer, Mikhail Shlyapnikov, integrated blockchain technology to track the farm activities. The following were the reported benefits of blockchain:-

• A new form of cooperation between consumers and producers
• Nearly all openly recorded shares reserved or paid for
• Plans underway for the long-term implementation of direct supply, without intermediaries.

In this example, blockchain helped connect the farm produce directly with the buyers.

Read more about this here .