Using data to improve farmers’ lives

 

We focus on farmer-livestock data that influences financial products for farmers

Being on the ground is so much fun! For starters, we interact with the best customers in the World! “Farmers” These lots have a way of making merry and just bringing joy to our teams while on the ground.

Imfuyo focuses on the farmer-livestock data that our teams collect with the help of our web-based software helping us to analyze key learnings that lead to financial products for the farmers.

During our ground activations, we provide animal identity and valuation services integrated with our financial services such as livestock insurance and asset loans to the farmers. The livestock asset is legally considered collateral according to the Movable Property Security Rights Act of 2017.

One responsibility we have towards the farmer is health-nutrition and production education which is facilitated by our veterinary officer who joins us in a week-long campaign.

Dr. Kirui, An Imfuyo veterinary officer training the Emurua Dikirr farmer cooperative in Transmara East, Narok County

The country has arguably under 100,000 veterinary officers and this makes it very difficult to get veterinary services, especially for farmers in the deep rural places of the country.

The scarcity of veterinary information and services brings out the hunger in farmers to learn and ask many follow-up questions.

Farmers are curious in understanding several things concerning their livestock business. Some of the questions we encounter are;

  1. Is my cow, goat, and sheep in good health? What vaccinations, immunizations, and treatments are needed for my livestock when this or that occurs?
  2. What do you recommend for my cow’s feeding program?
  3. What should I do to influence the increase in my cow’s milk production? Or the weight of my cow?

Our favorite question from the farmers and farmer groups is always, Will you please teach us how to keep records? And how to unlock financial services such as loans and livestock insurance.

Get this, farmers out here have lost livestock in huge numbers all for them to hear about our financial solutions that would have given them some peace of mind.

You see, we advocate for the farmer’s peace of mind and one of the ways to provide this peace of mind is to insure the livestock against mortality while unlocking financial products for them.

There is a deeper conversation that is needed between service providers like us, insurance companies, and financial institutions as far as farmer-livestock products are concerned. We are still operating in the “stone age” days and true value is missing to the customers, the farmers. The same is true as far as veterinary services are concerned and it would be important to streamline this area as well.

Our host farmer Cosmas and his cows at the crusher minutes to ear tagging

We envision a time in the future when farmer-livestock data will be a common factor in driving new products across stakeholders in the livestock value chain.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *