Ghanaian agri-tech startup Complete Farmer has opened its smart farming platform to buyers who wish to purchase quality agricultural products at competitive prices, directly from the company’s tech-enabled farms.
Launched in 2017, Complete Farmer makes it easy for industries to source produce directly from farms, and for individuals anywhere in the world to own a farm in Africa.
Its first offering, launched last year, has enabled anyone around the world to become a “crowd farmer”, investing in a farm and monitoring its remotely, Currently, it has crowd farmers from six continents, and supports over 1,500 acres of farmland across six regions in Ghana.
The startup, which raised US$100,000 in pre-seed funding from the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) and the Kosmos Innovation Centre in 2017 and is currently looking to raise a seed round, has now opened its platform to agricultural buyers.
An end-to-end B2B commodity-sourcing platform, Complete Farmer enables buyers to operate more efficiently and with less inventory, while also giving them full visibility into the process, from cultivation and planting all the way to quality control, transportation and logistics. These investors provide necessary financing so buyers do not need to provide working capital for the farms – they simply need to purchase the produce, with price agreed upfront.
In addition to its buyer platform, the Complete Farmer team is bringing a data-driven approach to the farming process in Africa.
“Right now when anyone wants to go into farming in Africa, there isn’t a lot of information available on best practices and how to produce healthy yields. Most methods are based on empirical knowledge but not high-quality data,” said Desmond Koney, Complete Farmer co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO). “We’re providing a data-driven way to make farming more scientific rather than an art which it is now.”
