(5 May 2020, MedellinColombia)
This is about a social enterprise on a mission to reinvent the coffee supply chain, giving farmers a bigger and more equitable piece of the action. The firm hopes the technology will provide realtime information about the beans within the supply chain and help financially empower and educate rural farmers.
Alexander Barrett, founder at iFinca, said: “With this pilot program, we will look to demonstrate how technology and innovative data platforms can give coffee farmers even more financial empowerment and knowledge of the process.” The use of mobile phone technology would be at the core. “I’ve met farmers who have very little by way of possessions, but they have a mobile phone.”
iFinca is taking an entirely different approach to getting your coffee, using a blend of mobile apps and blockchains—the shared ledgers upon which to overhaul the tracking process from crop to cup. “It’s a revolutionary way to compensate farmers more fairly for what they actually produced.”
The company, which is based in Medellin, Colombia is launching its Micro-Lot program in the next few months,July 2020.
The effort is now in what Alexander calls a “pilot phase”,focused on Colombia, where the founder resides and has local ties. In its current early phase, the founder is working with 10 or so individual farms. The hopefor the Micro-Lot program is to connect farmers to deliver a limited batch to customers using iFinca’s proprietary platform—that is, test out the model to see what works and needs to be improved in preparation for a full-fledged launch.