MakerDAO challenge: Fintech Solutions to Support the Agricultural Sector

[ghettodev]

Description

MakerDAO will be exhibiting at the 3rd Asia Finance Forum: The Future of Inclusive Finance on the 6th and 7th November, taking place at the ADB's HQ in Manila. As MakerDAO enables an open financial ecosystem, we would like to put a challenge to the community to build some solutions for the obstacles faced by ADB, when targeting the agricultural sector.

Important: Please note this challenge is not a collaboration and ADB is in no way affiliated with MakerDAO. The giveaway is not in any way endorsed by ADB. It is purely an independent Maker initiative to incentivise the community to brainstorm solution for real life challenges using Maker protocol, while also standing to gain some extra DAIs.

Details of the Challenge

Calling for Fintech Solutions to Support the Agricultural Sector

Asian Development Bank (ADB) is looking for great ideas in solving the problems of smallholder farmers. To kick off your creative juices, they are giving you an idea below on how this could potentially be tackled. 

Still, ideas for AgriFin Challenge are endless! So feel free to submit other solutions that go beyond this concept.

Example: Digital platform that will provide access to a range of non-financial services (marketplace, value added services, information, access to quality input prices, etc.) throughout the agricultural value chain, connecting financial services (credit, payments, savings, insurance) where it makes sense.

For your deliverable, ADB expect:

• A video demo of your prototype that is a combination of two to three services.
• A presentation deck including a product roadmap.

Problem Statement

The agriculture sector in Asia is composed primarily of smallholders, with agricultural holdings averaging less than 5 hectares for the region. Smallholder farmers play a significant role in achieving food security, contributing up to 80% of the food supply. Yet small scale farmers remain among the poorest, most marginalized, and most vulnerable sectors.

Increasing the productivity of smallholders will help them move out of poverty. However, they face several constraints. Among them:

• High quality seeds, fertilizers, feeds, equipment, and other inputs are subject to high transaction costs, asymmetric information of prices, and market monopoly.
• Limited channels to the marketplace lead to low bargaining power and post-harvest/processing losses.
• Post-harvest, farmers are exposed to price risks caused by limited crop shelf life. Farmers have a short window to distribute their harvest which leads to paper thin margins.
• In the livestock (dairy) industry, as the cost of collection and transportation of milk is high, because of the scattered nature of the production system, farm gate price of milk is low.
• Knowledge and skills to improve productivity and value are lacking. In addition, access to information, such as prices and weather conditions, needs to be improved to aid in decision making.
• Lending to the agriculture sector is perceived to be high risk. Financial institutions offer credit products that have high interest rates and repayment periods that are not compatible with agricultural cycles. Access to other financial services such as savings and insurance is also limited due to remote farm areas and lack of financial literacy among smallholders.
• Many smallholder farmers are financially excluded
• Women farmers tend to have less access than men to productive assets, opportunities, and technology. The female share of agriculture labor in farms is 40%–50% and is increasing due to migration of men to urban areas and overseas for employment.

Ideas for Solutions:

The solution must take into consideration the context of most rural communities in Asia—poor internet connectivity, use of regular feature phones, and operations in remote, hard to reach areas. The solution may have an online and offline component. It should also be flexible enough to cater to the different agriculture subsectors (crops, livestock, poultry).

Below is an example of a use case we are looking to solve:

• The livestock value chain in Tajikistan is unproductive, and extremely inefficient. In particular, the dairy value chain has several disperse actors (dairy processors, farmers, breeding, concentrate, and fodder enterprises, financial institutions, public support institutions) that need to be integrated.
• Over 90% of the cattle are owned and over 90% of the total milk is produced by household farmers. Household cattle have low productivity due to chronic under-feeding and poor animal and husbandry practices, low reproductive efficiency, and weak market access for their products. The Tajik livestock sector also has high incidence of several animal diseases. Quality assurance and food traceability are major concerns. Furthermore, growth and competitiveness of the dairy processing industry is constrained by limited availability of fresh milk, dispersed collection, and state of infrastructure.

About Asian Development Bank

The Asian Development Bank envisions a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Asia and the Pacific, while sustaining its efforts to eradicate extreme poverty in the region. Despite the region's many successes, it remains home to a large share of the world's poor: 330 million living on less than $1.90 a day and 1.24 billion on less than $3.20 a day.

ADB in partnership with member governments, independent specialists and other financial institutions is focused on delivering projects in developing member countries that create economic and development impact.

As a multilateral development finance institution, ADB provides:

• loans
• technical assistance
• grants

Our clients are our member governments, who are also our shareholders. In addition, we provide direct assistance to private enterprises of developing member countries through equity investments and loans.

What's in it for you?

1. To gain visibility in the global financial stage
2. A chance to pilot your solution with ADB's support
3. To bring decentralisation to the real world.

Challenge Milestones and Awards

Start a team or join an existing team here.

MakerDAO will give away DAIs if you integrate DAI or Maker protocol in your solution:

Challenge 1: MakerDAO will give away 300 DAI/team if you submit an application and deliver the two deliverables set by ADB.

Challenge 2: If your team is shortlisted to pitch at the final pitching day at the ADB's HQ in Manila on the 5th Nov. Maker will give away 3000 DAI on top of the prize money give away by ADB.

For more details of the challenge, please refer to: Call for Fintech Solutions to Support the Agriculture Sector

[gitcoinbot]

Issue Status: 1. Open 2. Started 3. Submitted 4. Done

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This issue now has a funding of 3000.0 DAI (3000.0 USD @ $1.0/DAI) attached to it as part of the MakerDAO fund.

• If you would like to work on this issue you can 'start work' on the Gitcoin Issue Details page.
  • Want to chip in? Add your own contribution here.
  • Questions? Checkout Gitcoin Help or the Gitcoin Slack
  • $154,033.71 more funded OSS Work available on the Gitcoin Issue Explorer

[bshevchenko]

@ghettodev will you cover flight expenses to Manila?

[gitcoinbot]

Issue Status: 1. Open 2. Started 3. Submitted 4. Done

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Work has been started.

These users each claimed they can complete the work by 2 years, 4 months ago. Please review their action plans below:

1) thesachinmittal has been approved to start work.

Research the model of SEWA, and other government programs where value chain involves several actors. (Increasing the chances of corruption, and improper execution)

Keeping in mind the restrictions of knowledge and digitisation. We will segment our market, and design a DAO architecture. Where the system will be run by community. 2) amadeobrands has been approved to start work.

Work Plan: Dexkon (Дехкон) - Collectively strong

Dexkon is a mobile/SMS application that enables smallholder farmers in Tajikistan to form cooperatives and make life easier for the smallholder farmers. This app provides the right tools to empower cooperatives leaders to successfully organize & improve the farmers their structure and conditions.

We already applied for the contest and got approved.

Learn more on the Gitcoin Issue Details page.

[ghettodev]

@ghettodev will you cover flight expenses to Manila?

No, but here are details about how travel is covered on the Rules page on the ADB site though.

[amadeobrands]

@ghettodev We have submitted all data and are accepted into the hackathon now working on all materials to get into the finals.

Team name: Dexkon - Collectively strong

[gitcoinbot]

Issue Status: 1. Open 2. Started 3. Submitted 4. Done

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Work for 3000.0 DAI (3000.0 USD @ $1.0/DAI) has been submitted by:

1. @thesachinmittal

@ghettodev please take a look at the submitted work:

• PR by @thesachinmittal

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• Learn more on the Gitcoin Issue Details page
• Want to chip in? Add your own contribution here.
• Questions? Checkout Gitcoin Help or the Gitcoin Slack
• $88,761.22 more funded OSS Work available on the Gitcoin Issue Explorer

[amadeobrands]

@ghettodev see here our submission https://github.com/DexKon/Dexkon-Collectively-strong Please approve our worker proposal thank you.

[kohkoh17]

@ghettodev how do we get approval for the DAO after the submission to ADB?

Here's our code repo - https://github.com/suenchunhui/Fair-Rice-Trade

Thanks a lot for posting!

[ghettodev]

Hi @kohkoh17, I'm not sure what you mean by approval for the DAO. Let's continue the conversation over email? rich@makerdao.com

[sirlupinwatson]

Sorry about late reply @ghettodev but this was a great grant to offer. Agricultural is a well known controversy talk , with all the things around it and agriculture man or women that own a family business are running into problems all the time

I am very aware of this since i had my house in the country where is surrounded by farm etc and i did worked a while into this and aware of the trading price for soya etc...

I had idea that i can tell ( no need bounties just for fun ) if you still need them

@+++