₦airaland Forum

My own is, did you read the recent brouhaha on twitter about farmcrowdy? It was crazy and I had to pay attention especially since its one of the agric tech platforms that has been doing so well. It started when a twitter user said they didn't have insurance with Leadway and trust Nigerians, it blew up from there.

To get the full gist, check their handle, (happened on the 25th) and also read their detailed response on the blog:

Farmcrowdy, Twitter threads and the Truth

Yesterday, the 25th of June, 2019 at 12:12pm, someone posted this about us on Twitter which has led to a series of tweets circling the Twittersphere:

“Leadway provides insurance for Farmcrowdy. A client who has business with leadway wanted to verify the authenticity of Farmcrowdy and asked leadway about the service they provide.”


We will like to state clearly that “the client” and the account that posted this on Twitter, did not reach out to us to confirm this statement before posting this tweet.

While it may be difficult to trust businesses, not everything and everyone is out to kill you. Some of us, in this case, Farmcrowdy actually set out on a mission to empower rural farmers with a clear business model, and we have stayed true to this mission.

We have decided to write this post to, at the very least, refute all unfounded claims and rumours about our business, shed some light on what we’ve managed to achieve and continue to work on, and reassure our farmers, followers, sponsors, and investors that we remain committed to our mission and vision for this business.

To continue, this tweet led to comments like this:

One Twitter handle commented

“They use the investments to farm, but usually record heavy losses due to bad Agronomic practices, and unreasonable expectations.

IMO, they are just there for the money and the ‘farming’ is bait.”

—-

It’s really important that before anyone makes bold statements like this, you have your facts straight. For one, you cannot say that we record “heavy losses” because you have no access to our records. We’re certain that if this user was in any way connected to the Farmcrowdy platform, he’d know that we are very deliberate with how we communicate our efforts; sharing monthly farm updates (both video & pictures) with all our farm sponsors & organising periodic farm visits so our farm sponsors can see the farm activities and interact with the farmers firsthand.

Bad Agronomic practices? Farmers that work with us expand farm operations 5x more and increase their income by 80%.

If we were there just for the money, we wouldn’t be expanding into more states year on year, onboarding more farmers, adopting more crops and commodities (this year alone we’ve introduced Ginger and Cattle farms into our portfolio), and in response, seeing a significant increase in the number of our farm sponsors as well as an eager waiting list of sponsors who want to buy farms.

We certainly won’t have impacted on the lives of 11,000 smallholder farmers in 14 states across Nigeria and grown to a team of 50+ people with solid agricultural, marketing and operational backgrounds.

Farmcrowdy, Twitter threads and the Truth

Everyone is talking Agriculture, Agriculture, but my own experience nearly bankrupt me. My farming experience almost killed me, but let me start from the beginning...

I have always wanted to venture into farming from an early age having grown up in the village with my grandmother, maybe it’s because I believe there is so much potential in the business, but every attempt at getting started and keeping up with it has been a serious pain.

First, I started out with Catfish farming and lost millions. Then I tried to grow maize on my village farm in Oka with my brother supervising, but I had plenty stories, the farm is too small, fire has caught the plantations, brother, thieves have stolen the fertilizer, too much gist.

If that was all, it would have been good, in fact, recounting this story is so painful because I could have taken a shorter route and avoided all this headache in the first place.

The next thing I know everything started falling apart. Later, I discovered that I was planting maize at the wrong season and the fertilizer wasn’t in the right mix along with some dishonest people working for me. Yet, this people were making mouth like they are the experts, they have it all sorted out.

At the end of the day, I waited to harvest the remaining maize and prepare to sell. What no one tells you about agriculture is the wahala that is involved in selling when you harvest. We were many harvesting the same time and the price of everything I harvested crashed.

I vowed that this was the end and I’ll just focus on my day job then I will return to the farm when I retire. But thankfully, I was relaying this story to a good friend of mine who had a smile on his face while I was recounting this horror story.

My friend just shook his head and told me that he had already read a lot of similar stories online and that was why he took the safer and more guaranteed route.

He told me that he also had a maize farm and his farming has been nothing but smooth. He didn’t have to deal directly with farmers, because he didn’t have the time to train them, neither did he deal with labourers or selling the farm produce at the end of the farm cycle.

I almost fell off my chair…

So I checked further and discovered that my friend had invested in agriculture through a platform that took care of dealing directly with farmers. The farmers had hands-on training from dedicated farm specialists, they were given improved seed varieties and were always on-ground to monitor the farmers, from planting to harvest to getting buyers for the product that was harvested so that there is nothing like wasted harvest or the farmer can’t sell .

To say “I felt I had just been handed a hot EXPO to profitable farming in Nigeria” was an understatement. I was excited.

So, I invested the little money I had left from my misadventure and used it to sponsor farms on this online platform that allowed people become farmers without a farm. The platform is Farmcrowdy. Of course, I still did my research and I kept seeing nothing but good reviews, coupled with my friend’s testimonial, I just went ahead. Sat down, relaxed and waited for the harvest while getting all the farm updates on my dashboard. I went to their website www.farmcrowdy.com and got all the information and within 5 minutes I had invested in a farm.

They don’t know this but I was really happy when I received my returns after harvest 2 days before the due date. I have now since invested in their chicken, maize and rice farms. With returns from 15% in 9 months, I was excited about funding their farm projects because they make the farmers life better while I make money farming. Even if something happens on the farm, they have farm insurance with companies like Leadway Insurance and AXA Mansard to protect my money. This is just too good.

No wonder the Vice President of Nigeria - Prof. Yemi Osinbajo even spoke about them on Channels TV on May 1st describing Farmcrowdy as a fantastic and innovative idea that is changing how people farm in Nigeria.

My name is Nnaemeka Obinna and I am now a proud farmer because I farm on www.farmcrowdy.com

If you doubt me, ask someone around you what they say about Farmcrowdy, you will see thousands of Farmers like me using Farmcrowdy from Nigeria, the UK, the US and Dubai to sponsor small farmers in Nigeria today. In fact, see a recent video of what the Vice-President of Nigeria, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo said about Farmcrowdy.

God bless us oh!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilNQ-8MJ3e8&t=4s

Everyone is talking Agriculture, Agriculture, but my own experience nearly bankrupt me. My farming experience almost killed me, but let me start from the beginning...

I have always wanted to venture into farming from an early age having grown up in the village with my grandmother, maybe it’s because I believe there is so much potential in the business, but every attempt at getting started and keeping up with it has been a serious pain.

First, I started out with Catfish farming and lost millions. Then I tried to grow maize on my village farm in Oka with my brother supervising, but I had plenty stories, the farm is too small, fire has caught the plantations, brother, thieves have stolen the fertilizer, too much gist.

If that was all, it would have been good, in fact, recounting this story is so painful because I could have taken a shorter route and avoided all this headache in the first place.

The next thing I know everything started falling apart. Later, I discovered that I was planting maize at the wrong season and the fertilizer wasn’t in the right mix along with some dishonest people working for me. Yet, this people were making mouth like they are the experts, they have it all sorted out.

At the end of the day, I waited to harvest the remaining maize and prepare to sell. What no one tells you about agriculture is the wahala that is involved in selling when you harvest. We were many harvesting the same time and the price of everything I harvested crashed.

I vowed that this was the end and I’ll just focus on my day job then I will return to the farm when I retire. But thankfully, I was relaying this story to a good friend of mine who had a smile on his face while I was recounting this horror story.

My friend just shook his head and told me that he had already read a lot of similar stories online and that was why he took the safer and more guaranteed route.

He told me that he also had a maize farm and his farming has been nothing but smooth. He didn’t have to deal directly with farmers, because he didn’t have the time to train them, neither did he deal with labourers or selling the farm produce at the end of the farm cycle.

I almost fell off my chair…

So I checked further and discovered that my friend had invested in agriculture through a platform that took care of dealing directly with farmers. The farmers had hands-on training from dedicated farm specialists, they were given improved seed varieties and were always on-ground to monitor the farmers, from planting to harvest to getting buyers for the product that was harvested so that there is nothing like wasted harvest or the farmer can’t sell .

To say “I felt I had just been handed a hot EXPO to profitable farming in Nigeria” was an understatement. I was excited.

So, I invested the little money I had left from my misadventure and used it to sponsor farms on this online platform that allowed people become farmers without a farm. The platform is Farmcrowdy. Of course, I still did my research and I kept seeing nothing but good reviews, coupled with my friend’s testimonial, I just went ahead. Sat down, relaxed and waited for the harvest while getting all the farm updates on my dashboard. I went to their website www.farmcrowdy.com and got all the information and within 5 minutes I had invested in a farm.

They don’t know this but I was really happy when I received my returns after harvest 2 days before the due date. I have now since invested in their chicken, maize and rice farms. With returns from 15% in 9 months, I was excited about funding their farm projects because they make the farmers life better while I make money farming. Even if something happens on the farm, they have farm insurance with companies like Leadway Insurance and AXA Mansard to protect my money. This is just too good.

No wonder the Vice President of Nigeria - Prof. Yemi Osinbajo even spoke about them on Channels TV on May 1st describing Farmcrowdy as a fantastic and innovative idea that is changing how people farm in Nigeria.

My name is Nnaemeka Obinna and I am now a proud farmer because I farm on www.farmcrowdy.com

If you doubt me, ask someone around you what they say about Farmcrowdy, you will see thousands of Farmers like me using Farmcrowdy from Nigeria, the UK, the US and Dubai to sponsor small farmers in Nigeria today. In fact, see a recent video of what the Vice-President of Nigeria, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo said about Farmcrowdy.

God bless us oh!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilNQ-8MJ3e8&t=4s