Village agents: the last mile runs on people, powered by an app

Digifarmer reaches farmers through agents who live in the same villages, not through a growing payroll of field staff. That is how we plan to grow from thousands of farmers to hundreds of thousands without our costs growing at the same rate.

Why a central team can't reach every farm
In September, one of our field officers drove 198 km for a single training session. The transport bill was larger than the soil-test revenue it produced. A smallholder business can't scale like that. Distance, fuel and time are the hidden costs of rural agriculture, and they rise with every new district.

The Digifarmer agent model
Our answer is a network of locally recruited agents. Each agent is a trusted person in the community, often a lead farmer, a cooperative member or a young agriculture graduate. With the DigiAgent app, they:
• register and profile farmers, including farm location and crops
• book and support soil tests
• take orders for inputs and connect farmers to buyers
• follow up with farmers, our officers have already trained
Our salaried field officers become trainers and supervisors of agents, not the people knocking on every door.

Where the network stands
In Uganda, field officers in Lira and surrounding districts signed and onboarded agents through September, with 15 agents onboarded by 28 September. In Kenya, our Nakuru team built a network of 16 active agents within weeks of launch, alongside 12 more recruited by 1 October. Our agent mobilisation team has reached out to 58 prospective agents to grow the pipeline. October targets include 20 financing agents per field officer, who will help farmers access credit through the platform.

What we learned (and fixed)
• Work close to home first. We now ask field teams to use nearby farmer groups fully before travelling further. Re-engaging farmers we've already trained costs less than finding new ones far away.
• Verify before paying. Every agent's credentials are checked in the system before any commission is paid. This protects us and the farmers from fake registrations.
• Small barriers matter. Some agents slowed down simply because they ran out of mobile data airtime. Small support like this keeps the network active.
Why this matters to investors
• Variable cost, not fixed cost. Agents earn in activity, so our cost grows only when revenue grows.
• Trust at the doorstep. Farmers buy from people they know. Agents bring that trust to the platform.
• A repeatable playbook. The same model works in Lira and in Nakuru, which makes each new region faster to open.