Farm to Table

Bangladesh is an agricultural country with fertile lands. More than half of our labor force is farmers. But for the past few years, they are being ripped off. The price of rice in wholesale is lowest in 3 years. Because of supply chains, the final price of rice is almost 5x of the initial price at farmers valued. The same goes for other products too. Both farmers and consumers are being affected by these. This is hampering the economy of Bangladesh.

Our plan is to build a home delivery service powered by mobile application for agricultural goods like vegetables, fruits etc. We will collect goods directly from the farm and serve them to consumers. This will eliminate all the middleman problems. Thus we will be able to serve the consumers with goods at a reasonable price and provide the farmers their fair price.

In case of rice alone, in 2018-2019, Bangladeshi farmers produced almost 35 million tons of rice. The government has planned to buy only 1.85 million tons of rice from farmers. Here the public procurement volume roughly amounts to 1/19th of the total rice output. In Bangladesh’s case with such a small scale market intervention government can’t dictate price terms for private rice traders and millers, thereby leaving impoverished rice farmers largely at the whim and mercy of millers and traders, who ultimately determine the market price, often to the disadvantage of small and marginal farmers. And  just in case of rice alone, almost 85% of farmers are suffering as they are getting only 17 taka per kg whereas the final price in capital is almost 60 taka per kg. The problems of these middlemen are also present for other agricultural products like vegetables and fruits. 

Not only the price of agricultural products is a problem but also people are being deprived of fresh and quality products. Banned pesticides and toxic substances are being used. Under these circumstances, we plan for building a new supply chain that will distribute agricultural goods to consumers directly from the farmers.

One of the main problems of our agriculture market is the inflated price of the farm goods. Also they are filled with banned pesticides and toxic substances. We will start this initiative to serve farmers in general and start with capital city, then all the people of Bangladesh in the long run. 

We will make sure to provide fresh food directly from farmers to everyone's table with less hassle and in less time.

We will also ensure that even the poor people can get fresh foods as we intend to keep better prices for everyone in this inflated market. 

To conclude our solution will be helpful for both the farmers and the consumers.

According to our planned solution, we will have a mobile or web application. This application will contain all the details of available agricultural goods like prices. Consumers will be able to place orders for their desired goods using our application.

We will have our local agents employed at the agricultural zones of the country. As we receive an order, we will inform the local agents. They will buy the products directly from the farmers and those will be delivered directly to the consumers home.

 As we are buying directly from farmers at a higher price point than others, we are valuing our farmers more. They get more for their products. And as we lessen the supply chain, less value will be added in the price of products and people can get the final product at lesser price point than usual market. 

Because of the app, we will need less manpower or no physical market. We will be able to deliver the freshest products within 2-3 business days too.

In Bangladesh, most of the labor force is farmers and women of the rural area usually depends on the man. The farmers work very hard but don’t get the fair share of income they deserve. Also, because of too many steps in supply chain and political reasons, the price of goods in urban areas is too much. The rich people may have no problem with this but middle class income people face problem buying goods. Also, most of the product is not even fresh and sometimes it’s contaminated with chemicals. 

Our solution ensures that farmers will be well paid and consumers will get their products at a reasonable price. We will also ensure that consumers are getting quality and fresh products. Thus we believe our solution will be effective enough to all eliminate all the problems mentioned.

Our solution will serve two major types of people:

• Farmers living in rural area.
• People living in urban area.

We plan to launch our initial project in the capital city. In a year, we will include around 7,500 farmers in this service where about 100 thousand urban people will be benefited from this.

In 5 years, our target will be 25,000 rural farmers benefiting more than 1.5 crore urban people.

1. Developing the app and website.

2. Creating a head office and start a pilot project of 10-20 zonal office.

3. Creating an efficient delivery system.

4. In 5 years, our target is to be the biggest digitized agricultural product supply chain.

1. Lack of capital and man power.

2. Creating a fast delivery system.

1. Collecting funds through VC or competitions.
2. Finding the right people and training them for the project.

Currently we are just two founders working on our solution.