Ag Tech Sunday - How Farmers can benefit from the digital wave

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Maximiliano Landrein, Co-Founder and CEO, at Agrofy shares his thoughts on how Covid-19 has impacted the agriculture industry, and how farmers can benefit from the digital wave created around the world as a result.

Maximiliano Landrein, Co-Founder and CEO, AGROFY

How is the current Covid-19 crisis affecting Agrofy, and how do you see your business evolving in the coming months?

 Unfortunately, the Covid-19 crisis has impacted the whole world and businesses in a variety of economy sectors. For Agrofy and the “digital world” in general, we can observe an acceleration of the adoption curve of technology, both by industry and farmers. Farmers who still were not very familiar with online shops are now, more than ever, looking for reliable providers. The same thing happens in the industry as companies were not so close from going digital, or struggled with internal culture with the incorporation of an online channel, are now disrupting this paradigm and looking for ways to expand their footprint both with the brand and channel capillarity. In times like these, we understand the importance of technology and how it can help the business. We are glad to propose this experience to the consumers.

What are the key trends driving the growth of marketplace platforms within the ag value chain?

 Definitely the generational behavior changes are already driving a lot of “technification” to the buy/sell process. Farmers aged between 20 and 35 years have a different view from brand loyalty, cost-effective in production, and the way to make business, choosing digital as a partner that can offer more perspective in terms of possible business partners and providers. Also COVID-19, of course, is going to require social distancing for a while, and that changes the whole dynamics of meetings, fairs and events in our sector. The companies are going to look for the right way to incorporate their Go-To-Market strategy to digital.

End users/consumers are also protagonists in this process since they are demanding more transparency on the origin of the food that goes to their plates, and marketplaces will be an important source for traceability due to the amount of audience it concentrates, both from industry and farmers.

How do your customers’ experiences of B2C marketplace platforms influence the functionality of your platform development?

 One very important part of our work is business intelligence. We evaluate all the information, trends, and other KPI’s to improve Agrofy´s platform both for farmers and for Agrofy´s partners with the exhibition of their products.