Agricultural Business Tools
Farmbook
Name Shaun Ferris and Deepak Jannu
Emails: shaun.ferris@crs.org ; djannu@technobrainltd.com
Company size:
CRS - 4000 employees, 70 countries,
Techno Brain - 800 employees, 15 countries
Profit - Techno Brain : Non profit - CRS
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Why Farmbook?
Farmbook is designed to provide Farmer facing business planning tools
To support our work in “Value Chains for Vulnerable Farmers”.
Provides a systematic process that helps field agents and farmers to
improve decision making about food and financial security:
Helping field agents and farmers to monitor
productivity gains and measure support to food
security
Helping farmers to develop business plans and
measure costs, income streams and profits within
local and national markets
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What does Farmbook do?
ENABLES
CURRENT FARMBOOK CAPABILITIES
Register
farmer
groups
• Collect information on farmers e.g. household and
land sizes
• Register individual farmers within farmer groups
Assess
profitability
• Gather production cost information for specific
products
• Estimate gross margin based on product pricing
Develop and
maintain
business
plan
• Produce a business plan for a specific product.
• Gather and capture information as a target for sales,
product attributes, market strategy, target market, a
profitability analysis and a basic implementation plan
Generate
reports
• Generate printable reports on profitability
assessment and business planning outcomes to
be handed to farmers at project levels
• Generate revenue reports at a cross project level

Identification of products
with market opportunities

Upgrade of production
system to meet market
needs

Develop business plan and
an implementation plan

Facilitate collective sale of
produce to identified buyers

Assess profitability of
marketing strategies

Use results from one season
to improve marketing
activities in subsequent
seasons
3
Current management and information structures
Project manager
Nutrition
Project staff
Partner
Staff
Partner
Staff
Project staff
Partner
Staff
Gender
Project staff
Partner
Staff
Theme managers
Finance, productivity, marketing
Partner
Staff
Project staff
Partner
Staff
Project staff
Partner
Staff
Partner
Staff
CRS Project
Field staff
Local
Partners
Field
Extension
Agents
200 +
Farmer Groups
5000 +
Operating Model
We want to adopt a partnership model for Farmbook to ensure long term sustainability
that will benefit local partners and primarily the target farmers we serve
PARTNERSHIP
CRS
Techno Brain
• Ability to work closely
with farmers through
of understanding of
local cultures
• Enhancement of
product to provide
more functionality
• Provide a stable
technical platform
Target farmers who:
TO SERVE
Local
Implementation
Partners
• Strong agriculture
methodology
• Skill building through
training
• Produce on farms
of two to five
acres of land
• Do not own
mechanized tools
• Use limited inputs
• Are not well
organized
• Have no formal
financial links nor
opportunistic
trading
relationships with
buyers
6
Roadmap
Together with a technology partner, we envision to deliver additional capabilities within
Farmbook to fully support an entire project lifecycle
CURRENT RELEASE




SUBSEQUENT RELEASE
Register farmer group
Analyze profitability
Develop & Maintain Business Plan
Generate Reports







Developed in-house by CRS
Farm logs, to record training & assets delivered
Skills acquisition assessments
Production scheduling
More than one agricultural crop product
Non-crop products
Link to impact survey analyses
New languages
Developed as a commercial product by a
TechnoBrain
7
Business Model
There are various sustainable business models for Farmbook:
Techno Brain Overview
Inception (1997 - 2002)
Started operations in 1997 by setting
up state-of-the-art IT Training Center
at Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania
Expanded operations to Kenya & Uganda
by setting up IT Training centers
Strategic Move (2003 - 2008)
Started offering ICT Solutions
in the Africa region
Expanded business operations across
West, East, South & Central Africa
Set up a Research & Development
center in East Africa
Set up training centers in Ethiopia and
Malawi
Global Expansion (2009 - 2011)
Set up a Software Development Center
In Hyderabad, India
Started operations in USA
Setup an office in UAE
Started New Business Operations: BPO
/ ITES
Set up a Software Development Center in
Nairobi, Kenya
Trained more than 100, 000
people including Government
and Corporate Executives
Capacity Building: Hire, train &
employ fresh local talent
across locations
Introduced Employee Exchange
Program between India
Development Center & Africa
Geography / Location
Current Operations: 13
Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Zambia, Malawi
Mozambique, South Africa, UAE, India, USA, UK
New Expansions: 14
South Sudan, Congo, Angola, Burundi, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mali
Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin
Reference Clients
P
U
B
L
I
C
NSSF Tanzania
KEPHIS
Malawi Local
Government
Uganda Revenue
Authority
Tanzania Police
Force
N
G
O
P
R
I
V
A
T
E
Alliance for a Green
Revolution in Africa
UNDP
Family Health
International
Serengeti
Breweries
Chemi & Cotex
BERCO
Kick Start
International
Kenya Airways
Meenakshi Mission
Hospital & Research
Centre
Pepsi Co
Case Study
Challenges
Needs
and
The Tobacco Control
Commission Malawi
wanted to
implement a Smart
card based Tobacco
grower’s registration
system and hired
Techno Brain for
implementing such a
system
Solution
Benefit
The implemented solution consisted of the
following:
• A web based application connecting all the
regional offices of TCC with a centralized
database.
• A terminal application running on a handheld
small device, capable of carrying out
registration, renewal and capturing of finger
prints for ordinary members at district field
sites.
• A GPS device integration, which captures and
stores the GPS co-ordinates of the tobacco
growing fields for the purpose of identifying
duplicated field registrations.
• An offline Grower Finger Print Identification
system, to identify multiple registrations by
the same grower.
• The storage of all the related information will
be done in a centralized Database.
• Scalable to add new offices, new users, new
handheld devices and integrate with other
external systems with minimum change and
effort
•
•
•
Accuracy and accountability to tax
collection.
Improved control and information
flow between departments.
Increased overall functionality and
improved
organizational
performance.
QUICK FACTS
Organization
 Name: Tobacco Control
Commission, Malawi
 Location: Lilongwe, Malawi
 Industry: Public Sector
 Products / Services:
Growers Registration
 Revenue: N/A
 Employees:200+
 Website: www.tccmw.com
Future Working Relations
• CRS is a humanitarian development organisation
seeking software solutions that improves our service
efficiency, quality, scale.
• TechnoBrain is a technology company seeking to
help clients deploy existing software solutions and
craft new solutions to meet client needs.
• This partnership is seeking to build new
opportunities to design and deploy solutions in a
more sustainable manner.
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