Established in 2015, Landmark Millers Ltd is a social enterprise dealing with the production, aggregation, and processing of maize, sorghum, and cassava. The aspirations of the company are to increase its sourcing volumes by both increasing the number of farmers in its portfolio and the productivity of these farmers. To achieve this, the company provides various services including access to quality seeds, mechanization, post-harvest equipment and facilitate access to finance. Agents are a critical lever for the achievement of Landmark Miller’s ambition. The company engages the agents in both the mobilization and servicing of the farmers as well as in off-take.
To serve the farmers effectively and cost-efficiently, Landmark Millers sought to answer key questions. a) who are the farmers they should work with and what’s their current performance b) what is the business case for the select services that the company is providing to the farmers and c) how can the agent model be optimized to achieve scale
This report provides insights along these lines and recommends:
- Align the number of farmers they need to work with to the target sourcing volumes of the company while being cognizant of the processing capacity, financial needs, and the number of agents required for the company to operate efficiently and effectively.
- Leverage the data collected through the farmer management system (E-prod) to implement a farmer segmentation and graduation approach that enables tailoring of services to incentivize farmer loyalty and income increase for both the farmers and the company.
- Utilize agent performance data collected through the E-prod system to create additional incentives for agents such as bonuses and encourage the graduation of normal agents to super agents.
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