March 2021 agricultural “platforms” in a digital era

Diverse business models
While most agricultural product and service 
marketplaces have common characteristics, there 
is wide variation in how operators design and 
manage their service delivery models to facilitate 
the exchange of agricultural goods and services. 
This ranges from purely digital marketplaces 
(e.g., Grao Direto in Brazil or Farmster in 
sub-Saharan Africa) to models with significant 
on-the-ground human resources and/or physical 
infrastructure (e.g., Aibono in India or Farmshine 
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in Kenya and Malawi), passing through highly 
curated models (e.g., EthicHub in Mexico or 
Croper in Colombia), and single or crop-agnostic 
value chain players. This diversity is due, in part, 
to the highly localized nature of agriculture, 
where farmer needs depend strongly on their 
location and the value chain(s) in which they are 
active. But it is also driven by the nascent stage of 
the sector—the industry seems to be in a constant 
state of experimentation and innovation, with no 
clear winning models yet uncovered. 
Ultimately, defining an agricultural product and 
service marketplace model comes down to five 
key strategic and business management choices 
regarding: 1) who to serve and what market 
friction to solve, 2) in what value chains and 
geographies, 3) with what products and services, 
4) through what customer engagement model, 
and 5) using which revenue model. See the Annex 
for overview of how the different types of market-
places differ on these characteristics.
1. Who will the marketplace serve and 
what friction will it solve?
Product and service marketplaces create value 
by reducing market frictions. At the most 
fundamental level, most agricultural marketplaces 
active today focus on bringing farmers and 
value chain actors together when they would not 
otherwise be able to connect (or would do so less 
efficiently). However, different user segments 
(e.g., offtakers, input suppliers, service providers, 
or farmers) face an array of additional friction 
points and needs that agricultural marketplaces 
must understand and potentially meet. This 
impacts the range of services facilitated or offered 
through the Platform, as well as its go-to-market 
strategy. For example, an agricultural supplies 
marketplace targeting smaller, more vulnerable 
farmers may have to facilitate advisory services 
in order to educate farmers on the use of 
fertilizers—or enable access to finance if target 
farmers struggle to pay for the inputs. It may also 
need to create a network of agents to increase 
product awareness and train farmers in the use of 
the Digital Platform to onboard them quickly. A 
produce marketplace targeting large buyers may 
need to work with local aggregators that collect 
produce from multiple farms to meet minimum 
production volume requirements.
The different core Platform functions outlined 
in Section 2—aggregate and organize, facilitate, 
curate, provide infrastructure, and generate 
and utilize data—are each suited to resolving