As one of the most significant contributors to the Caribbean economy, the agriculture sector plays a major role in the lives and livelihoods of all citizens.
The quality of what we consume affects the quality of our lives and enhancements in the agriculture industry present benefits for everyone.
Yet some may argue that the industry has been left behind in the age of digitisation.
This is the gap that AgriConnect, an e-commerce platform for the modernisation of agricultural trade, seeks to bridge.
Launched by TT Financial Centre in collaboration with the National Agricultural Marketing and Development Corporation (Namdevco) and the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), the platform connects Namdevco-certified farmers with commercial buyers to provide fresh, high-quality, locally-produced goods.
The platform was developed by Public Good Studio (PGS), a small, independent software development practice focused on making sustainable projects that benefit the public.
Designer at PGS, Agyei Archer explained the role of the e-commerce platform in agriculture.
"It’s important to know that when we speak about Caribbean agriculture we acknowledge that all of our existing food systems are dependent on our farmers.
"All of them, even considering the large proportion of the food that we import in TT, our domestic systems are still entirely dependent on Caribbean farmers and agriculture.
"...What we’ve aimed at doing is creating a platform that’s scalable, user-friendly and that’s built to work for the needs of the primary needs of the farmers who need to sell their goods at the best prices…and we want buyers to be assured that we have high-quality produce," Archer said.
To ensure quality, every six to eight weeks Namdevco's quality assurance officers inspect the farmers’ produce.
Namdevco not only facilitates quality assurance but also market data which Archer said was a key component in developing the platform.
"We started with an immediate challenge of solving a singular problem, expanding e-commerce options in TT, Dominica and St Vincent."
[caption id="attachment_1146362" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Richard Young, chairman of the International Financial Centre, left; Agyei Archer, director of Public Goods Studio and Kazim Hosein, Minister of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries, at the AgriConnect launch at One FinTech Avenue, Port of Spain on March 25. - Photo by Ayanna Kinsale[/caption]
Through support from the UNCDF, Archer and his team went to Dominica and St Vincent.
"We needed to understand the similarities and the differences that there were before we started making software…these farmers may be Caribbean but they all exist and operate in their own domestic industries in different ways. Each of them has a different distance from the end-user, each of them has particular challenges and advantages.
"...A lot of our first set of work was developing tools that allowed us to take Namdevco’s information and make it usable.
"...The first thing that we did was we took the market prices that g
