The Agricultural revolution and strategic initiative

Agricultural Revolution and the strategic initiative was birthed to help smallholder farmers not only increase output but also maximize their gains and improve their standard of living. One main issue faced by smallholder farmers in Nigeria is post-harvest loss. This is due to a lack of access to the big city markets where their commodities are highly-priced. Hence the middlemen take advantage of their lack of storage facilities to buy their produce at a ridiculously low price. This has made most smallholder farmers impoverished. To give them real-time access to big city markets we created an app called the market woman.

This app though primarily was designed to shop groceries online was later expanded so smallholder farmers can list their harvest online such that should a farmer have a hectare of corn to harvest, we will publish it on our site for interested bulk buyers to indicate interest then we link buyers to sellers so the buyer goes to the farm or send a representative who monitors the harvest for him and bargains. 

My winnings will be used to launch the app, storage facilities, and set up logistics which is one of the major hindrances faced by smallholder farmers. 

My name is Benedicta Salubi Oporoza.I am from Delta state Nigeria. I studied industrial Physics at the University of Benin, Nigeria. In the bid to start up a rice business in 2019, I had to visit a local rice community in Edo state where their major occupation is rice farming and processing. This visit gave me a first-hand experience of what smallholder farmers suffer in Nigeria as they live in abject poverty due to a lack of farm mechanization and infrastructure. From then, I decided to take up their issues and help them tell their stories. That was the birth of this Non-governmental organization The Agricultural Revolution and strategic initiative.

Our vision is to lift smallholder farmers out of poverty by giving them access to mechanization and infrastructure.

Our mission is to be a conduit that channels resources to these smallholders’ farmers who have been grossly marginalized by telling their stories to the world.  

I am solving the problem of post-harvest waste of farm produce by giving the smallholder farmers access to the big city markets.

Most agricultural settlements in Nigeria are remotely located and the roads are so bad that people would not want to go there. This leaves the burden of transporting their produce on the smallholder farmer who is now forced to sell at any amount to the middlemen that come to the village market because he does not want to go back with the produce and also that he has needs to meet and worst still, the produce will go bad because of lack of storage or processing facilities. This puts the farmers in a very disadvantaged position during negotiation.

To help these farmers maximize profit, we enlist as many farmers as possible that are into different commodities. They call us when they are ready for harvest with details of what they have to harvest. We list what they have on our app 'the market woman' then interested bulk buyers commit to buy, then send a representative to monitor the harvest and negotiate. So the farmer losses nothing as he is harvesting specifically for a ready buyer.

My work is innovative because instead of the farmer going to a buyer, we bring the buyer or a representative to his farm step. So it is a disruption of the norm.

We also have a logistics arm which makes moving the produce less of an issue to both the seller and buyer.

We are enabling smallholder farmers to maximize their earnings which will give them more money to take care of their families and live above poverty.

Their cost on logistics is shifted to the buyer and also their post-harvest losses are totally scrapped. This adds up to their profits and earnings.