Starter Kit. Idea 291 of 500. Cluster 14
A wholesale market app that shows the day's prices, so the farmer stops selling blind
The mechanism, from the book
The smallholder sells raw to a collector at the gate and the collector sells to a packer who puts his own name on it. Denmark's farmers got rich the day they owned the creamery.
The first step
Visit the nearest wholesale market at opening for 2 weeks and record the prices of 10 common vegetables each morning. Send them each day by text message to 30 farmers who agree to receive them free. At the end, ask how many changed when or where they sold, and whether they would pay a small monthly fee. Paying subscribers, or a trader wanting to advertise, is the proof.
- Who pays first
- A farmer deciding whether to sell today or tomorrow, who will pay a little each month to stop being underpaid at the gate.
- What leaves today
- Farmers sell without knowing the day's price, so the difference between the gate and the market is kept by the collector.
Ask first
- Information and Communication Technology Agency. Ask whether they support price-information services for farmers.
- Data Protection Authority. Ask what you must do to keep farmers' phone numbers and data safe.
Check before you spend
Whether market traders will let you record prices daily, and how you keep the subscribers' phone numbers and details private.
Find out these three numbers
- How much do prices swing for one vegetable in a week?
- How many farmers would read a daily price message?
- Who would pay to keep the service running?
A comparison from the book
New Zealand. Chapter Eleven
"a buyer plays them off against each other, and the price falls to whatever the most desperate grower will accept."
A farmer who knows the day's price is no longer selling blind to whoever offers least.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.