Designing With Web - Part 3: week 1

Increase the incomes of small-scale food producers

Group 3

Project 1: Smarket - An Online Market For Small-scale Producers

Context

when? where? who? why?

In general, and over time, it is clear that small producers will increasingly have insufficient income in relation to their products and family responsibilities. The situation in African countries, but also in Western countries, proves this phenomenon. It is in this context that we decide to set up an application that will help small producers to succeed in evacuating their production and especially in a rapid manner. It will be enough for the producer to fill in his profile on the application to know what he sells, the zone in which he is located but also to give an approximation of his income, then he will fill in all the available product part with the prices below. As for the customers, all they have to do is log in to the application and buy the products, which will be delivered to their address in two days.

Target

for whom?

This app will attract those small-scale producers who feel difficult to find customers and bargain with them. We offer the producers a plateform to share and advertise. We will also attract those who want to buy good-quality and fresh products.

Service offered

what? how?

We are creating an online app which will give small-scale producers a chance to expose their products. We will explain to these producers how to install the applications and what it requires before any use. And then we teach them how to create alerts to customers : when the products are available and how to download them on the application.

The application will therefore allow producers to have more customers than they had now. They don't need to reduce their prices to compete with those large producers, who make them enter the usual markets with difficulties. With the application, the buyers can just choose and compare what they want. The payment process is also simple and safe. Both the producers and the buyers will be ensured. We guarantee the whole supply chain, including the supply, delivery, return, etc.

Web interface

It will be a free app available on all smartphones regardless of their operating system (Android, Apple...). Small-scale producers will therefore only have to download it. The interface will be extremely simple and ergonomic. Anyone who has downloaded the application must first register by filling in what motivated them to download the application:

  • Are you a small producer or a buyer?
    • In the first case, it needs to inform whether it is a small producer and the information is necessary to set up an accurate account, which will help us to offer more targeted service.  The producers will then be able to inform her identity and upload the supporting images of products.  Once this is done, they just need to wait for the arrival of the consumers. The buyers can mark thier preferences, add products to the panier, click the photo to see more details. All the processes are simple.

    Identity

    Pick images to describe the universe around your service (context, users, places, techs, …) and name your service accordingly.
    Don't try to illustrate the final service that you may have in mind but instead its context.

    Local small-scale food producers sell what they grow. Source

    Some offline small farmers markets. Source

    We offer a complete supply chain management. Source

    Quick and guaranteed delivery. Source

    Benchmark

    List concurrents / relative projects and describe how they relate/differentiate to your project

    References

    books/films/articles/...

    Project 2: Green Investors

    Context

    when? where? who? why?

    By 2030, one of the UN SDG goal of "Zero Hunger" is to double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers. However, small-scale food producers can face challenges to have full access to resources during production activities, including access to land, knowledge and technical skills, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment, and this makes .

    Among all these issues, we consider access to adequate financial services the most important factor to sustainably increase incomes of small-scale food producers, because they can start agriculture production only when they have seed capital to buy equipment or adopts new technology to enhance production. In addition, because they themselves are also one of the important elements of labor production and their production process is greatly affected by nature, they need agricultural production and commercial health insurance to withstand risks.

    Unfortunately, we notice it is not easy for them to apply for a loans from traditional financial institutions because of lacking credit history, proper proof of repayment plan or collateral. Therefore, this project is to help the small-scale food producers by improve the financial inclusion in developing countries.And traditional commercial insurance rarely involves agricultural production. Farmers are also very reluctant to afford the generally high commercial health insurance. Therefore, this project is to help the small-scale food producers by improve the financial inclusion in developing countries.

    Target

    for whom?

    This project is firstly targeted on on smallholder farmers because they are directly related to the supply of main crops for people in unprivileged countries. Borrowers, smallholder farmers involves people who produce rice, cane sugar, cereals, cocoa, coffee, fruits, tea, cotton.

    Service offered

    what? how?

    We will provide crowd-lending services by engaging citizens in any country, that is Lenders, who has available funds could be the lenders to help small-scale producers. Here are our steps:

    Identity

    Pick images to describe the universe around your service (context, users, places, techs, …) and name your service accordingly.
    Don't try to illustrate the final service that you may have in mind but instead its context.

    Benchmark

    References