draft - near final
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draft of 6 month performance reportTRANSCRIPT
“ With myAgro, I can save ‘doni, doni’ (little, little) when I want, however much I want. With credit, I always needed another loan. But with my savings, I can earn more every year.” – Samaké, Falan Village
By the numbers 342 Farmers saving with us
$6,000 USD value of farmer savings to date. We’re on track to leverage over $10,000 of small-‐scale farmer savings to help them improve their harvests and get out of poverty, permanently.
1200 Savings cards sold
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3 Village Vendor Partners
150 # of control/test farmers we will survey this May as part of our rigourous evaluation processs
1 myAgro operated store in a market center.
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It’s been an incredible six months since myAgro launched in Mali, West Africa and I am delighted to share our progress in our first 6-‐month report. In this report, we’ll share updates from our various programs as well as more background on Mali and myAgro’s unique and innovating savings model for small-‐scale farmers. It’s hard to describe the amazing momentum of support behind myAgro’s model. What’s most exciting for the myAgro team is that small-‐scale farmers, like Maritou Samake, are the ones leading the way. Maritou is a farmer in Sanambele village who registered with us in December to plant a half-‐hectare of peanuts. After listening to a training on how to access markets led by myAgro’s Business Associate, Maritou returned to the meeting with her husband and 200 pounds of peanuts to sell. Marietou sold her peanuts, and then promptly turned to the village vendor (a myAgro partner) and bought a savings card of 10,000 CFA (~$20) towards her $48 savings goal. Marietou inspired her neighbors and the myAgro team by demonstrating the effectiveness and power of being able to save right at harvest time for inputs of next year. Not suprisingly several others followed Maritou’s example. To date, we’ve enrolled 342 farmers in our maize, sorghum and peanuts program who in total, have saved over 25% towards their savings goal in preperation for planting this rainy season. It’s clear that small-‐scale farmers see the benefits of having a safe way to make committed savings towards fertilizer and seed for the rainy season. Even in the days following Mali’s recent coup, farmers continued to make saving payments via SMS. At such an uncertain time politically, it is even more critical that there are persistent ways for small-‐scale farmers to invest in their farms and contribute to the food security of the country. Instead of raising millions in food aid, which is unsustainable and often counter productive, myAgro believes that we can be a catalyst and help farmers use their own capital more effectively to increase their income, season after season. Thank you for supporting and cheering on our hard-‐working farmers from afar – we couldn’t have done this without you! Anushka Ratnayake, Founder and Director Ka sènè soro yiriwa! Grow more profit from agriculture!
Women’s Peanut Program
•100+ women enrolled in 3 villages •$25 average savings goal •42% saved to date towards goal
myAgro women have the opportunity to save for fertilizer and seed for 1/16 , 1/8, ¼ and ½ hectare of peanuts – and their husbands are beginning to value the women’s financial contributions by planning early and selecting better land for their wives to cultivate! Women, have turned out to be enthusiastic savers, saving over 42% of their savings goal to date. They earn their money from village savings groups where women come together, save $1 every week and take turns giving each other loans with the savings accumulated. In fact, there are 400,000 women farmers who participate in savings groups like these that we hope to reach in the years to come! Through our program, women can save for fertilizer and seed and then qualify for trainings on how to plant, weed, harvest and store their peanuts for longer. We’re also ensuring that every step of the way, farmers ensure they’re avoiding a fungus called aflotoxin. We’re hoping to find a market for high-‐quality peanuts in the fortified peanut butter sector, which 1) will help myAgro farmers earn a higher-‐than market price and 2) support efforts to help malnourished children in Northern Mali. Maimouna Coulibaly, a group leader in Sanambele village is excited about the savings aspect most of all. She told us recently:
“I love savings because it suits me more. I can progress and pay when I have money, it's easier.”
Women in Mali Women in Mali face a number of barriers – lack of access to land, low literacy levels (18%) and less access to formal education. The average women has 6 children and cultivates a small piece of land to grow vegetables and rice. Our women’s program logo, the baobob, represents strength, creativity and endurance -‐ all adjectives that aptly describe the amazing women in the myAgro program! We hope to grow our women’speanut program from 3 villages to 20 in the next year.
Men’s Cereals Program • 200+ men enrolled • Average $100 savings goal • 37% progress to date • Growing on average 1 HA of Maize
Farmer’s Radio myAgro has a weekly radio program that reaches 2 entire communes (~50 villages) which helps us build legitamacy in the eyes of farmers. As one farmer told us “I heard about your program on the radio and now I believe you! If you tell everyone the same thing you told me, it means a lot!” Our programs are a mix of farmer interviews, trainings and call-‐ins with prominent people in the agricultural sector. Here, the mayor gets interviewed – he became a member afterwards!
We have two men’s programs – sorghum and maize, both two of the top three cereals grown in Mali. On average, our maize and sorghum farmers have signed up for roughly 1 hectare of inputs, and are 37% towards their savings goal. Farmers we surveyed were using seed from their father’s generation – some seeds were even 20 years old and producing less than 1 ton per hectare. For the same amount of labor, plus a little bit more of their savings to pay for certified seed, farmers can expect to grow 3-‐4 tons per hectare with myAgro! Farmers can also elect to get a labor loan to rent an ox and plow or to by a planting machine with a microdisk to apply fertilizer correctly. While in modern farming, microdosing fertilizer is known as the best way to increase harvests and profitibility, for farmers with large land sizes, it would be impossible to add a teaspoonful of DAP for every single plant – there are more than 33,000 plants in 1 hectare! By giving a loan for farmers to rent an oxen and plow or buy a planting machine, we double the amount of land farmers can cultivate using modern planting techniques – increasing farmer’s harvests and profits. Sekou Coulibaly, left, told us:
“With myAgro, and good rains, I hope I will have a great harvest this season!”
SMS Payments • 1200 savings payments to date • On track to collect $10,000 in
program revenue • Modeled after the way farmers buy phone credit for their cell phones.
We partner with village vendors who have an existing stores in the villages where we work to sell myAgro savings cards alongside the tea, sugar, and other household goods they sell. When farmers go to their local shop, they can buy savings cards conveniently and transparently: • After a farmer buys a savings card, the vendor sends an SMS on the back of the card to myAgro • Our database receives and validates the code and adds the amount of the card to the farmer’s
account. • We respond back to the farmer with an update on their new payment and their progress.
See a short 3-‐minute video on how our SMS database works!
Vendor Assistants Vendors and their assistants get regular trainings, feedback and marketing support to increase their savings card sales. Here, Coulibaly reviews some marketing photos with Fassoli, who is learning how to motivate farmers. Fassoli himself is a member, who’s saved for over 2 HA of maize and counting! He also learned how to send an SMS for the first time and helps other farmers send their sms payments throughout the week.
Our Vision for 2012 • Increase enrollment to 2000 farmers • Increase ave. savings goals by 10% • Offer more high-impact products:
fruit, vegetables and drip irrigation
Help myAgro implement our bold vision Consider joining our partners, One Acre Fund, Mulago Foundation and Syngenta Foundation in helping us close our funding gap for 2012. Your donation will help us develop our pilot program further, increase our reach and impact with farmers and help increase food security at a critical time in Mali’s history! To help myAgro grow more, donate securely online via our fiscal sponsor, Trust for Conservation Innovation: Or send a check to: Trust for Conservation Innovation (please write myAgro on the check) 150 Post Street, Suite 342 San Francisco, CA 94108 Or, for other ways to donate and more information, please email: [email protected].
myAgro’s Model | Importance of Savings-‐based Approach Through our pilot, we hope to prove that farmers not only can save but also will save if we provide them with an option that is safe, transparent and convenient. There are over 1.4 billion small-‐scale farmers in the world who need ways to invest their own money to increase their harvests to feed their families. If we can help farmers leverage their own funds, plus support them with training and access to large-‐scale markets we can help them achieve their goals and increase food security in the region as well. Mali, which has a strong savings culture – over 400,000 women participate in savings groups throughout the country – but lack ways to save up for fertilizer and seed. myAgro fills that gap, and helps farmers access the tools, training and market incentives they need to increase producitivity and move beyond subistence farming.
Helping people save their way out of poverty can be much cheaper and less risky than help-ing people borrow their way out of poverty. Borrowing has its place, but now is the time to focus on saving.
Dean Karlan, IPA, Stanford Social Innovations
Review
myAgro Core Values Our values make us unique, keep us focused and are the “special sauce” that makes us successful in helping farmers out of poverty.
• Implement market-‐based solutions: we build and develop markets for our products and services to increase farmer revenue.
• Listen: We listen to our customers and team members and make extra efforts to include and listen to women.
• Promote fair and transparent partnerships: we partner with vendors and farmers transparently and fairly.
• We’re dedicated to having a professional, curious and collaborative culture. We strive to do our best every day.
• Innovation: We think of easy to implement solutions to complex problems. We use innovation to bring focused and sustainable financial opportunities to our customers and partners.
• Courage and Passion – We care intensely and work
passionately to ensure our farmers’, vendors’ and myAgro’s success. We have the courage to resolve difficult problems, reach hard-‐to-‐serve areas and develop sustainable solutions to end poverty for thousands of farmers.
• Results – we get results, we beat deadlines and meet targets – consistently. We stay away from “analysis –paralysis” to get things done and out to the farmers as quickly as possible.
Want to learn more? Contact us!
www.myagro.org +223 7772 8888