myAgro Quarterly Report | FY 2017 Q1
July – September 2016
This quarter the team’s focus has been on planting with 18,000 farmers, reviewing the recent season’s
performance and preparing for expansion in Q2. While the rains were delayed by a month in Senegal,
they finally picked up in August and farmers planted using a revised planting method to help farmers
address the shorter time period to plant. In Mali, the rains were only two weeks late, and picked up to
be a healthy rainy season. Rainfall in the current season is a good predictor for future expansion –
when farmers have a good rainy season they are less risk averse and have more cash to invest in the
following season.
All of this bodes well for myAgro’s plans, which are to expand over the next few months. This quarter
also brought in significant bench strength to the myAgro leadership team – adding a Country Director
for Mali, Vice President of Development, and promotions within our finance team. You’ll read more
about our new team additions in this quarterly report. The outlook for Q2 as the field team begins
enrollment and payments is positive and bright. The team is prepared to bring in 30,000 farmers and
over 600 million CFA ($1.1 MM USD) in revenue in FY 17. As always, after reading the quarterly
update, please let us know if you have any questions or feedback. Thank you for your support!
Program Dashboard
FY 16 Actual
FY 17 Goals
15,000 planted
l 18,000
30,000
180
205
l 220
300
226
309
l 315
590
Impact: % Harvest
Increase
50 – 100%
50 – 100%
50 – 100%
Field Revenue (gross, in
‘000’s)
% Field Sustainability
$261
$575
TBD – results will be
available in December
2016.
l $559
29%
40%
l 35%
Metric
FY 15 Actual
FY 16 Goals
Scale: Farmers Served
10,000
Scale: myAgro Team
Scale: Vendors
FY 17 Actual
TBD Q2
$1,100 (600
MM CFA)
40%
Program Timeline
Activity
Enrollment
Payments
Delivery & Planting
Ag Corps Hires
Harvest
Vendor Selection
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
myAgro Quarterly Report | FY 2016 Q4
myAgro’s Model
myAgro’s goal is a more just world for smallholder farmers who have the tools to save rather
than borrow their way out of poverty. Through myAgro’s mobile layaway model, farmers in Mali
and Senegal use their mobile phone to make small payments toward seed, fertilizer, and
technical training in advance of the rainy season. These investments allow farmers to produce
50-100% more food each year. Currently, myAgro farmers earn an additional $75-$350 per
farm. A mobile layaway-led model widens financial inclusion to all farmers who want to invest
in their farm to increase their productivity, including women, risk-averse, or non-creditworthy
farmers.
Over the past five years, myAgro has developed an
effective, replicable program model that is becoming
increasingly cost-efficient. Each district has a hierarchy
of Field Coordinators, Supervisors, Agents, and Vendors
who work with farmers. Improvement of the trainings,
materials, and systems that support the field teams has
driven down the field cost of service delivery from
$200/farmer in 2012 to around $60/farmer in 2015. Forty
percent of field costs are currently covered by field
revenue. Continued improvements in all of these areas
will push the cost per farmer down further and drive
myAgro to 100% field sustainability by 2021.
Core Program Update
Planting – farmers planted in late June in Mali and in August in Senegal due to a delayed rainfall there.
While myAgro regularly does a control vs. myAgro survey at harvest time, this year the M&E team also
conducted a planting survey in Sikasso with myAgro & control farmers to better understand what the
difference was at planting time. The results were eye opening. For context, Sikasso is the agricultural
heartland of Mali, where there is significantly more competition in the agricultural sector than the areas
where myAgro has worked to date, and yet the results show a clear market edge for myAgro:
Metric
myAgroFarmers
ControlFarmers
Agriculturaltraining •  100%ofmyAgrofarmers
a4endancein2016
reporteda/endingatraining
•  3%ofcontrolfarmers
reporteda/ending
Modernplan=ng
techniques
•  96%offarmersfollowed
myAgro’splan6ng
recommenda6ons1
•  Only53%ofcontrol
farmersusedsome
moderntechniques
Fer=lizerusage
•  100%ofmyAgrofarmersused •  30%ofcontrolfarmers
fer6lizerat6meofplan6ng.
usedfer6lizeratthe
6meofplan6ng(44%
overallusedfer6lizerat
somepoint.)
Thecontrolfarmerswhoused
fer6lizerused80%morethan
recommendedformicro
dosingwhichleadstolower
returnoninvestmentand
fer6lizerrunoff.
1
The high rate of farmers following the myAgro method at planting may be because this was measured during a pilot with a smaller field
agent to farmer ratio. myAgro Mali’s normal rate of planting elsewhere in the program is closer to 80% planting adoption.
The next step in the M&E process will be to complete harvest measurement in Q2. The planting survey
data above will help the field team assess how to refine myAgro’s value proposition to new farmers
myAgro Quarterly Report | FY 2016 Q4
during enrollment time and help the entire organization more clearly demonstrate its impact in
supporting farmers.
Moving Beyond Early Adopters – Seydou Keita is a first-time myAgro farmer who joined after
watching a few friends and family members plant with myAgro in previous seasons. After being
impressed by their harvests, he decided to join myAgro this year by planting a half-hectare of maize
and purchasing myAgro’s precision planter. Even though Seydou has more available land, he wanted
to “test” myAgro for himself before investing more heavily. It’s a behavior we often see during the
customer cycle during enrollment – new farmers consistently sign up for introductory farm packages
before increasing their saving payments 30% on average in year two.
What’s new is that as myAgro expands beyond the initial early adopters who joined the program in
earlier years, the field team is finding that convincing new farmers to follow modern planting
techniques takes more effort. Farmers who were reticent to join in the earlier years are, similarly, also
reluctant to change their farming behavior to apply the microdosing method. Since the myAgro model
of microdosing (small amounts of fertilizer per plant hole) was so different than his traditional method,
Seydou conducted an experiment on his own to see what the difference by dividing his field into three
parts (see below). It’s a good reminder that the field team needs to be ready to adapt as more farmers
join past the early adopter stage. For some farmers, like Seydou, they need to personally experience
the myAgro difference themselves even after seeing results on others’ fields.
By using a myAgro precision planter to plant his farm, Seydou said was able to save time cultivating
his land and he hopes to plant his entire farm with myAgro next season after seeing these results.
Seydou's wife is also a myAgro member, planting peanuts and okra in order to add to the family
income. See more about the planter below.
myAgro Plans Expansion Across Southern Mali - This year myAgro
is looking to expand further in Sikasso. Sikasso (to the south of
Bamako) is the most populated region in Mali and has the highest
rainfall and agricultural potential in the country. Michigan State
University called the region a potential breadbasket for all of West
Africa if fully optimized. Yet Sikasso is one of the poorest regions in
the country: 83% live below the poverty line compared to 68%
myAgro Quarterly Report | FY 2016 Q4
nationally, and the region has the highest rate of stunting and malnutrition for children under 5. The
plan requires the creation of four new district offices and the expansion of two existing districts. The
addition of these areas will expand myAgro’s reach to 22,000 farmers in Mali, up from 13,000.
Impact Study of Precision Planter In Progress – This quarter over
200 farmers purchased the precision planter adding to the 100 who
purchased the precision planter in 2015. In an M&E survey carried
out this quarter, the top constraint farmers reported to using
fertilizer and microdosing1 more of their farmland is their access to
more labor and time at planting. The challenge in West Africa,
however, is that while land is widely available, there is a shortage of
human labor. While the average size of a smallholder farm in Mali
and Senegal is 5+ hectares, farmers are microdosing on average less
than 25% of their entire, potential farmland with myAgro. This means that myAgro has an opportunity
to increase market share of under-cultivated farms of current farmers.
In addition to the labor shortage, farmers must contend with a short planting period of only 2-4 weeks,
which is increasingly harder to predict due to climate change which results in shifting start dates for
the planting period. Farmers are no longer sure exactly when to plant and they might take shortcuts to
save time which results in lower yields.
myAgro’s technological solution to address the shortage of labor and time needed to fully plant and
cultivate farmland is a mechanized precision planter under development at myAgro since 2012. The
precision planter microdoses fertilizer and enables farmers to plant and cultivate 100% of their land
during the short planting period, without hiring additional labor. With this tool, myAgro farmers save
10 labor days per hectare, and significantly increase the amount of food grown and their net farm
income. For each precision planter sold 3 people on average access the precision planter for their own
fields. When accounting for the purchase price, each precision planter generates more than $500
{$506.20} in impact in its first year of use, and $770 in impact each year after that. This high level
of impact is exciting and important to getting to myAgro’s North Star – of increasing income by more
than $1.50 per farmer per day. Via the precision planter, myAgro can help farmers to cultivate more
land and move from subsistence farming to reliably supplying the market. More details on how
myAgro plans to accelerate sales of the precision planter in 2017 will be ready in Q2.
R&D
Development of Improved Sorghum Package - This season in Mali, myAgro worked on designing a
new sorghum package for farmers. Aside from being an important staple crop for the region’s farmers,
sorghum is more drought resistant than maize and can build a household’s resilience to poor weather
conditions. An improved sorghum package could act as a buoy during times when maize investments
produce lower yields than expected.
Based on insights gleaned from surveying farmers in the field, myAgro’s agricultural team selected two
new varieties of sorghum developed by the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid
Tropics to and developed a combined package of these new varieties along with a “full-dose” fertilizer
option and “half-dose” which halves the amount of planting fertilizer. The half-dose package lowers
the cost without significantly reducing the potential harvest. This is exciting because a lower price
1
Microdosing:addingasmalldoseoffertilizeratthecorrectdistance,depthandtimingforoptimalplantgrowth&ROI.Proventoincreaseyields50–
100%byICRISAT/CGIAR(UNbodyonAgriculturalResearchandPolicy)
myAgro Quarterly Report | FY 2016 Q4
point for this important food crop will help attract additional farmers who want to try myAgro without
committing as much fertilizer or payments as they would for maize.
85 farmers across 2 villages have tested both varieties of
sorghum side by side. Among them is Sanasi Berthé. Still
young, Sanasi faces many challenges as the head of his
household. For one, he does not always find the means to
invest in capital-intensive maize crops. He was very
happy that myAgro started offering sorghum packages
because sorghum is less fertilizer intensive and more
affordable for him to grow.
He planted one side of his plot with myAgro inputs (right)
and sorghum and the other side without fertilizer (left).
Sanasi is optimistic that the sorghum varieties will make
an important difference. “Seeing the vigor of the plants, I know that this plot will not disappoint me,”
he said. If successful, myAgro will scale the sorghum offering to farmers in most districts across Mali
along with maize, peanuts and vegetables.
Organization and Finance
New Senior Team Members - myAgro is excited to welcome Jim Anderson and Liezl Van Riper to
the team!
Jim manages Mali program operations. He previously worked for the BOMA Project
as the Country Director in Kenya and before that was Finance Director at One
Acre Fund in Burundi. Jim has more than 20 years experience as a banker,
investment banker, asset manager and financial advisor working with a wide
range of companies on four continents. He has a BA in math from the State
University of New York and an MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global
Management. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst. Jim has served on the myAgro
board since 2013, stepping down in July 2016 to join the myAgro team as VP Mali.
Liezl is a partnership development professional with 15 years of experience with
international nonprofits and social enterprises. Before joining myAgro, she
served as Kiva's Director of Business Development, and was responsible for
creating and expanding innovative fundraising and loan-raising partnerships
with foundations, corporations, and individuals. Prior to Kiva, Liezl was the
Director of Development for KickStart, a social enterprise NGO that enables
smallholder farmers in sub Saharan Africa to significantly increase income
through sustainable irrigation. Liezl hails from Southern California and
graduated with honors from UC Irvine.
Finance & Fundraising – Fundraising is going well. myAgro started the year with 1/3 already raised
and in addition brought in $350K of new funding in Q1. Liezl Van Riper is leading the development of a
robust fundraising strategy focused on managing renewals and building a large pipeline of new donors
to meet myAgro’s needs as we enter the mezzanine stage of growth. New awards from the first
quarter include:
•
$200,000 from Sall Family Foundation
myAgro Quarterly Report | FY 2016 Q4
• $150,000 from USAID DIV • $25,000 from Project Redwood
Farmer Profile: Income & Nutrition Boost from Vegetables
Vegetables are an important staple of West
African cuisine. They also have the power to boost
nutrition for farm families and increase income &
liquidity when farmers sell the surplus. This
season, myAgro bundled an okra package (seeds,
fertilizer and training) into the peanut packages.
Nearly 70% of myAgro farmers in Mali, most of
who are women, purchased this bundle.
Okra had several advantages:
• It’s often planted traditionally alongside peanut
fields so farmers are used to this crop already.
• They are a “super food” packed with vitamins,
protein and fiber
• They are easy to plant: okra can be planted in
one step, directly into the soil without first
planting a nursery.
• They can be stored or transformed for the
market in many ways – fresh, dried, sliced, or
as a powder.
• They are like an ATM: farmers harvest okra &
sell over 6-8 weeks bringing in critical liquidity
before their peanut or maize fields are
harvested.
• It’s high impact: based on previous studies,
myAgro estimates that this will increase
farmers’ net income gains from myAgro by >
80% on 1/8 HA of peanuts ($87 in net income
increase from peanuts and $75 in net income
increase from okra).
Swimming in a sea of green - Over 9,500
farmers planted vegetables with myAgro this year.
M. Korian Doumbia (pictured) shows us the
difference she sees in her okra fields. She said her
traditional farm was used to add to the family’s
meals but now with her myAgro field (top photo)
she’ll be able to sell at the weekly market for the
first time and eat more at home. Both fields were
planted the same week next to each other.
Based on the popularity & impact of this vegetable bundle, myAgro will include vegetable bundles
(okra and other crops) for maize crops in as well as peanuts in 2017.