2016 ICT4D Conference

Farmforce is a web and mobile platform built for use by large scale contract farming schemes composed of small holder farmers. The system allows these schemes to be managed with real time digital data. The system allows company agronomists & production managers to control which inputs growers apply to their fields, ensuring that that approved chemicals are used and that the correct maximum dose, pre-harvest intervals, and maximum number of applications per season are observed. The system provides support for data collection for international safety and sustainability standards such as Global GAP. Farmforce has a loan management module which supports cash and input loans calculated based on the size of farmer's fields. The Farmforce mobile application has a secure harvest purchasing module (including loan repayments) which is integrated with mobile weighing scales and a bluetooth printer for use at collection centers to improve transparency. The system captures data while online or offline enabling technical assistants capture data in very remote areas. The system provides detailed weekly production forecasts. The system supports low end android mobile phones like Samsung Galaxy Pocket which are cheap ($110), portable and easy to use.