Technology-enabled online aggregated market for smallholder farmers to obtain enhanced farm-gate prices

Abstract

Using scenario transformation methodology, we identified four scenarios that indicated a lack of trusted parties to sell harvest has forced smallholder farmers to sell the harvest to brokers who often collect the harvest at the farm gate at the lowest possible prices and sell in the market for large profits. As blockchain smart contracts provide a mechanism to reduce risk and establish trust between unknown trading partners, we transformed these into a scenario that establishes trust between farmer and unknown broker using smart contracts, generating a trust-enabled market. This scenario enables farmers to search for the optimum farm-gate price without relying on known brokers. The scenario is further enhanced to enable a Many-one-Many market linkage, facilitating automatic aggregated marketing. The paper presents the functional prototype of the scenario, explaining the functionality of the transformed system.