Financing Smallholder Farms with FarmDrive
It’s an exciting day at Planet—I’m pleased to announce that Planet has struck a deal with the innovative fintech company, FarmDrive. Based in Kenya, FarmDrive parses data from a variety of sources to provide financial services to a traditionally underserved market: smallholder farmers.
Specifically, FarmDrive applies data analytics and machine learning technologies to agricultural markets data and in-field observations to create comprehensive credit profiles and tailored loan products for farmers across Africa. Planet’s frequent satellite imagery provides a new insight-rich layer of data that can contribute to FarmDrive’s super-accurate credit profiles.
In Kenya, massive plantations growing coffee, tea, & other exports are bordered by smallholder farms. March 23, 2016. PlanetScope image ©2016 Planet Labs, Inc. cc-by-sa 4.0.
Planet and FarmDrive aren’t in this alone, however. We’ll be working in cooperation with the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) and Chicago-based firm, The Impact Lab, to assess satellite imagery’s validity as a data source for risk assessment on small farms.
I can say without a doubt that the Planet team is thrilled to have FarmDrive as a partner. Together, we’ll harness the power of frequent satellite imaging, and the latest automated analysis methods to help smallholder farmers succeed.
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