Why we partnered with Nuup: Improving livelihoods for small-scale farming in Mexico through digitalization
About 70% of Mexico’s farmers are smallholder farmers (approx. 3.6 million), who typically work in challenging geographies scattered across the country’s mountainous terrain, applying generations-old subsistence practices to grow low-yielding local maize. In addition, the lack of transparent market opportunities restricts farmers’ ability to sell their crops fairly, directly impacting their livelihoods. As a result, small-scale farmers typically earn a monthly salary of less than USD 180, significantly lower than the national average of around USD 350. Additionally, over 80% of these farmers lack social security. These challenges are exacerbated by the prevalence of intermediaries in the supply chain, who frequently claim a disproportionate share of the value generated by agricultural products. Consequently, farmers need more profits and resources to invest in quality improvements or sustainable farming practices.
The lack of digitization and limited access to crucial data exacerbate these farmers’ challenges. Digitization of core processes like internal control systems, harvest, and quality control allows farmer organizations to gain visibility into their business and identify opportunities to increase productivity and operational efficiency. Furthermore, digitization and data empowerment at the origin of agricultural supply chains challenge traditional market dynamics and information asymmetries. With data, farmer organizations are empowered to more effectively position themselves in high-value markets, negotiate trade terms, and access additional resources.
Leveraging technology can reduce the problems that farmers encounter by empowering their organizations to make informed decisions and improve relationships with all parties involved in the value chain. This is why the Strive Mexico Program, under BFA Global, is thrilled to announce a strategic partnership with Nuup. The generous support of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth is backing this collaboration. Nuup, a non-profit organization founded in Mexico in 2015, focuses on developing fairer, transparent, and sustainable value chains, including scaling tech solutions for small-scale farmers through their associations, including the entire agro-food value chain. By combining our resources and expertise with Nuup, we aim to drive transformative changes that uplift small-scale farmers associations, ultimately improving the livelihoods of small-scale farmers.
Innovation
Nuup has pioneered and collaborated in 29 initiatives to advance sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices, fostering equitable relationships in the agro-food value chain. By making market information more transparent through technology and developing user-friendly digital tools to improve productivity, efficiency, and resiliency in agricultural value chains, Nuup incentivizes and accompanies farmer organizations in Mexico to transition to more efficient and sustainable methods of production and trade.
Our thorough due diligence, including product audits, has given us valuable insights into Nuup’s capabilities and potential to collaborate effectively with us to help small-scale farmer associations overcome their challenges through digitization. We will leverage Nuup’s initiative – Sirio, a digital data management platform for small-scale farmer organizations in Mexico and Latin America for simple and integrated data management to improve operational efficiency and increase competitiveness in high-value markets. Digitizing key processes with Sirio ensures better financial returns by increasing sales in high-value markets, facilitating strategic partnerships, and enhancing sustainable farming practices. The Sirio platform can be accessed through mobile and web apps.
Nuup offers agronomic assistance to accompany producers in implementing regenerative agriculture practices; designs and implements innovative financial instruments and technical assistance programs to incentivize capital mobilization in small-scale agriculture; designs and implements technology solutions for data-based decision-making; and works with actors across the value chain to establish market access opportunities for small-scale farmers and their organizations.
Sirio, the priority of the engagement with Nuup, is a digital platform for simple and integrated data management for farmer organizations and agribusinesses. With Sirio’s mobile application, field agents can capture and consult data during field visits, including offline. Data flows to Sirio’s web platform, consolidated and visualized to help users identify risks and opportunities for growing and strengthening their agribusinesses. For example, Sirio generates reports and graphics to consult and monitor field team activity, harvest projections, financing needs, and product quality characteristics, among other vital indicators for making data-based decisions.
In addition to collaborating with Nuup’s initiatives, we will conduct research to understand better how small-scale farmers cope with financial, digital, and psychosocial challenges, including conducting gender-disaggregated analysis to inform the implementation of our partnership with Nuup from a position of more profound knowledge.
Impact
The impact of our partnership is envisioned to be both deep and wide-reaching. We aim to significantly improve the operational efficiency of 35 small-scale organizations through digitization by the end of this year. This means the partnership will ultimately improve the livelihoods of approximately 12,000 farmers.
