Agriterra co-organises launch of The Digital Agri Hub
07-02-2022Last November, Agriterra and The Digital Agri Hub initiated a collaboration to follow the development of digital solutions for agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean. As part of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) funded project AGRIdigitalización, Agriterra in alliance with Agros International, the Foundation for Rural Business Development (Funder) and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) developed a database on digital solutions for farmer organisations in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Digital Agri Hub tracks the development of the digital agriculture (D4Ag) sector in low- and middle- income countries, focuses on leveraging inclusive digital solutions for development and provides a unique perspective for scaling up and investing in digital agricultural innovations for small-scale producers.
Since December, the Hub began adding digital innovations for the LAC region and translated their dashboard to Spanish. Now the LAC map lists solutions in almost every country, many that can improve the management, income or productivity in farmers organisations.
On January 18, more than 300 participants joined the Zoom session to launch the Hub in LAC. The event initiated with an overview of the context in the region: rural connectivity and lessons learned from project AGRIdigitalización, trends in e-commerce, digitalisation and transparency in the agrofinancial sector.
Then, invited speakers pitch 12 of the solutions identified, covering a small varied sample of innovations. Currently available digital technologies offer huge opportunities for the sustainable and inclusive development of agriculture in LAC.
• Technical asistance solutions like Agrinapsis and AgriExt, both developed by IICA.
• Novel e-commerce platforms Algrano, Arvest, Producers Market, Thika Thani, Sube Latinoamérica.
• The financial app MiCaja, developed by Agrodigital in Honduras for Rural Community Banks.
• Supply chain management solutions eProd, Fair Chain Foundation and Farmforce.
• Coopecan Peru presented its experience of alpaca fiber traceability using Blockchain technology.
The slides and materials shared in plenary, as well as the pitches and slides from the different service providers can be reviewed online.
The collaboration does not end here, as we are already evaluating how to present more solutions to farmers and evaluate their impact.
