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Farmers across Africa and other parts of the world suffer lack of access to ready markets which results in high post harvest losses and low return on investments. Post harvest losses have been estimated by the World Food Program to be up to 30% in Sub Saharan Africa and nearly 1.3 billion tons of food produced for human consumption is lost or go waste globally every year.
Innovations on the farm are therefore essential to mitigate this conundrum to improve the lives of farmers and to achieve food security. Linking farmers to ready markets at good prices is a great way to improve the livelihood of farmers and the general populace.
In a country, Ghana, where people spend more money on food annually (47%) as compared to their expenditure on their housing needs (12%) or non-food expenditure (41%) of Ghana's total annual household expenditure of GHc61,507 million according to the recent living standards survey, investing in agriculture to improve food production should be at the centre of National discussions.
Moreover, Agriculture also contributes significantly to Ghana's economy which was 21% as of December 2016 and employs nearly 40% of the active labour force.
The Nana Akuffo Addo's Government has shown some efforts to improve the Agriculture sector through it's programs and initiatives such as the Planting for Foods and Jobs as well as the Ghana Incentive Based Risk Sharing system for Agriculture lending but there are still more challenges in the sector to tackle.
Farmart Ghana which is an online farmer's market in Ghana links farmers to households and businesses such as restaurants, hotels, supermarkets and they are contributing to the improvement of Agriculture, the lives of farmers and making affordable fresh farm produce easily available to consumers by making deliveries at their doorstep. Customers can also order Farmartbox, which is a box of fresh farm produce with just a click and will be delivered to them weekly or monthly. Payments of these fresh farm produce can be done after delivery or online via mobile money.
Companies and individuals are placing increasing value on the quality and traceability of their produce. There is a broken link resulting in lack of transparency along the supply chain and Farmart Ghana is solving this in a whole new smart way with their online farmer’s market.
Farmers now benefit from having an assured market and consumers can now have easy access to fresh farm produce at farm gate prices.
