Lagos- The Novus Agro Nigeria Ltd, an agro allied company, on Wednesday said it had introduced trade facilitators to limit the influence of middlemen in commodity pricing.
Mrs Obiajuru Luya, the Strategy Manager of the company, announced this at a press briefing in Lagos.
According to her, the activities of middlemen have been affecting commodity pricing at the detriment of the farmers’ income.
She said that 142 trade facilitators have been trained and empowered in ten states.
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Luya told newsmen that the company was providing vital commodity aggregation services to farming communities in Nigeria.
“In the past years, Novus Agro recruited and trained a network of young technologically surveying market facilitators in 142 communities across ten states in Nigeria.
“This will be one of the largest dedicated networks of market facilitators in the country.
“The facilitators live and work in the communities, providing vital commodity aggregation services to farmers.
“They are also playing extension role to support better yield from farms and to limit the influence of middlemen in the farming system,’’ Luya said.
Mr Ibrahim Buwanhot, the Business Development Manager of the company, also said that the trained facilitators were empowered with smart phones that linked field operations to the online platform.
He said that the smart phones were modified with GPS features to validate farmers’ data capture.
“Commodity aggregation and price enumeration is done by field agents armed with mobile phone devices.
“The system is bases on an innovative integration of web and mobile internet, allowing for development of the first world class technology solutions in some of the remote farming communities in Nigeria.
“Our wide network of facilitators and pilot operations across the network has allowed us to develop local insights for available infrastructure, logistics issue and market practices across the communities where we work,’’ he said.
He said that the GEMS 4, the World Bank and Accenture had shown interests in the activities of the company.
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NAN reports that the firm had established relationships with various buyers and processors of agricultural commodities in the country and had registered 6, 400 farmers on its platform in the last four years.
Novus Agro is an agro allied firm, collecting commodity price data from 50 markets in 20 states and tracking prices of 25 major commodities.
NAN also reports that Sachel Capital, Syngenta, Sosaco, Tomato Jos and others companies have been patronising the firm for price information. (NAN)
