M-Flock; Livestock Extension Platform
The livestock sub-sector is one of the fastest growing sectors with an average annual growth rate of about 20%. However, high prevalence of livestock disease and low productivity continues to hamper this development with over 60% of Livestock owners having their livestock affected by disease. Furthermore, only 40% of Livestock farmers have access to veterinary services. The sector is also affected by ineffective extension services, poor animal husbandry practices, and high animal mortality rates, funding limitations to livestock extension officers and highly informal markets which disadvantage livestock Farmers. M-Flock seeks to provide farmers with access to information, access to essential services such as Veterinary services, markets and market intelligence financial institutions, Insurance Companies and other Livestock value chain players while serving as a produce aggregator for small scale farmers who are unable to successfully market their produce. This would in turn increase farmers' productivity and income.
The MFL 2015 Annual Progress report cites low levels of front-line staff especially in the old districts. The staffing of livestock extension officers has largely been focused in the new districts created while the old districts remain with low staffing levels. While the government has tried to mitigate this by placing veterinary and livestock assistants in various veterinary camps, the provision of adequate extension services is still a challenge due to funding limitations. Additionally, the camps assigned to extension personnel are too vast to be managed by a single person with limited or no resources at all. Therefore, it is common place to find livestock farmers that have never been visited by an extension worker.
Livestock Marketing is also heavily challenged in that, most livestock markets are Informal and predominantly unorganized. The high information asymmetry often leads to poor transparent pricing mechanisms. Formal markets are largely dominated by large processors and most small scale farmers do not have access to these markets.
Imagine a farmer sitting late at night and trying to figure out the next steps in management of his Livestock. Whether he could sell more now to a local producer or head to a regional fair? M-Flock takes the farmers hand from pre-production to post-harvest marketing all on their mobile device.
M-Flock is a USSD and internet based application that gives farmers access to information, access to essential services such as Veterinary services, markets and market intelligence, financial institutions, Insurance Companies and other Livestock value chain players. It is a comprehensive solution for Livestock farmers designed not only to support them with livestock production but also to connect farmers to the vital players in their agricultural ecosystem. Using Machine learning, AI, GIS, location services and algorithsms, M-Flock will deliver a whole array of services to farmers that they currently are unable to access or are too costly.
Our market is divided into two, Users/Consumers and Customers.
- Users/Consumers: Our users are livestock farmers who have access to at least a feature phone. At least 1 million households in Zambia are involved in Livestock production with over 60% affected by livestock diseases. M-Flock through direct engagement continues to workout ways to make the platform more user friendly such as translating the platform into local languages.
- Customers: Our targeted customers are:- Agro dealers, Animal health specialists (Veterinary doctors), Animal Pharmaceuticals, Meat processors, Financial Sector Players - Agro-loan services and Agro-insurance services. Animal Nutritionists, Livestock Market Agents, Livestock Breeders, Livestock Consultants, Livestock Produce Buyers
- Support small-scale producers with access to inputs, capital, and knowledge to improve yields while sustaining productivity of land and seas
For a long time in Africa, agriculture has been viewed as a vocation that has been passed down from generation to another. However, agriculture is a science, a precise science at that. And M-Flock empowers farmers with the necessary tools and knowledge to enable them grow more efficiently, resiliently and nutrition conscious foods. With beef production contributing significantly to the carbon footprint, M-Flock enables producers to grow their beef in a climate smart manner. With M-Flock, farmers will have the knowledge on sustainable productive use of land, in turn increasing productivity and improve the supply chain,
- Concept: An idea being explored for its feasibility to build a product, service, or business model based on that idea