Priyanka Venkannagari
myAgro’s Theory of Change
One of my social innovators is myAgro, an agricultural company that sells farming
products and provides training to farmers in West Africa. myAgro’s main mission is to “move a
million small-scale farmers beyond subsistence farming and out of poverty by 2022 by creating
a model in West Africa that other distribution networks around the world can integrate into their
own program offerings.” The organization works to accomplish this goal through providing a
mobile layaway based payment system for agricultural products, for example seeds, fertilizer
and tools. Registered farmers buy myAgro cards from their local stores as they would weekly
groceries and buy accumulating these cards they eventually are able to afford need products to
achieve higher yields. The myAgro team also provides training in modern farmer methods to
help farmers utilize the new technologies.
The myAgro theory of change basically states that if farmers have access to modern
techniques and tools then they will have higher crop yields (intermediate outcome). myAgro
also believes that it is much easier for farmers to save in small increments similar to the way
they buy other household goods and not have to have the risk of microcredit. Having higher
crop yields will then allow them to earn more than just their subsistence farming rates of $2 per
day. This is another intermediate outcome that will lead to farmers having expendable income
that they will then use to deal with economic shocks, reinvest in farms, and take care of extra
needs. A couple of assumptions must me made to validate this theory of change. Some basic
assumptions are that farmers will have access to markets to sell their products and that the extra
product produced will all be sold out. An assumption that my Agro makes at the beginning of
the theory is that given the opportunity farmers will buy the myAgro savings cards. The
organization also assumes that no natural disasters will occur that will drastically deplete crop
yields. At the end of the theory of change it is also assumed that farmers will reinvest their
money into their business. It is also important to think about the externalities of producing more
of one crops including the fact that if there is not demand then prices for the crop will actually
decrees and profits might actually fall and this is something that I would question about the
theory of change for the organization. What if high crop yields in turn lead to lower prices? The
organization is helping farmers produce beyond a subsistence level of crops that will allow them
to get out of poverty. The metrics that myAgro is currently using to measure its success includes
measuring the before and after real income of the farmers and the vendors that sell the cards.
Attached is both a visual of the theory of change and the outcomes framework. myAgro
gives farmers greater access to farming tools and teaches farmers techniques of modern
agriculture (red boxes). Theses two practices in turn produce higher crop yields, which will then
pull farmers out of subsistence farming. Other factors obviously play a factor in achieving the
final outcome, including access to markets and greater access to financial capital and other
factors not listed. I agree with the current theory of change that myAgro has but I also wonder if
financial trainings are a part of their program, because it is important that once the farmers are
making more than $2 a day, they know what to do with that money, because unless farmers can
spend the money sustainably and responsibly they will not be able to continue their progression
out of poverty. Also even though myArgo states it main goals as being to help farmers make
more money, I think that this should really be an intermediate goal and they should broaden
there end goals. myAgro although works well for the individual farmer does not consider the
impact of the larger community and the need for improvement of infrastructure and need for
overall community development. myAgro also works on the assumption that the behavior for
saving already exists in the communities that they are working in, but to introduce a new
product and expect the community to accept it seems like a drastic leap for an assumption. On
their website they claim that, “farmers choose us, not vice-versa.” This is hard to believe
especially when the point of subsistence farming is that farmers do not have more than the
amount of money to survive so how does myAgro expect farmers to spend extra on layaway
even if it is incremental amounts, if they only have enough money to survive. The other part of
their model that I question is that even if the farmer has the money to put into saving up to
product, what is the length of time it takes for one purchase to be made. For example if a bag of
fertilizer costs $5 and the farmer only can spare .50 cents a month, then it would take that
farmer 10 months to buy one bag of fertilizer, by which time it seems like they wasted the
opportunity to use their fertilizer and even process the risk that the family will not be able to
make all of the payments necessary to reach their end goal. Although myAgro’s criticism of the
microfinance model for having too much upfront risk associated with it, they fail to show how
the longer term process of layaways alleviates the risks associated with it.
myAgro does have a solid theory of change that involves providing farmers with the
basics that will get them to produce higher yields and in turn let them make enough profit to
allow them to come out of subsistence farming. They have actually proven some success by
having seen an increase in incomes with some of the farmers they are working with. I would
love to see where the organization goes in the future and the impact it can have on a larger
scale. The diagrams below show myAgro’s theory of change and outcomes framework.
Outcomes Framework