“More farmers decided to join the program thanks to my field, and to be able to pay for inputs without debts.”
Timing is everything for myAgro farmer Odiouma Doumbia, who cultivates a 
half-hectare of corn in N’Tentou, a village in Mali. Mr. Doumbia was the first farmer in his village to re-enroll for a myAgro inputs package this season, beginning small payments on inputs for his next crop before this year’s crop was sold. The key, he believes, is starting early, so payments can stay small and manageable. “I could finish my payments on time last year,” Mr. Doumbia explained, “thanks to the ‘little by little’ payment system. It’s something I’ve never seen elsewhere.” In other years, Mr. Doumbia has had to negotiate the need for a large sum of cash to fund the upfront agricultural costs of seed and fertilizer for the next year, demanding a careful balance of timing the sale of his harvest and taking out loans—and paying back last year’s loans, too. myAgro allows farmers to save for their inputs in tiny amounts as low as $1, so farmers like Mr. Doumbia can regularly skim small amounts from their weekly budgets to add to their dedicated savings accounts. This means farmers don’t have wait for a big harvest payout to be able to begin paying for inputs. More importantly, they don’t have to worry about paying off last season’s debts before they can begin saving towards this year’s harvest.
For Mr. Doumbia, the size of his harvest is directly connected to the timing of his payments. “It’s the best method to help a farmer achieve a good harvest. Because when the farmer can pay for his inputs without going into debt, he can receive his inputs on time and begin his agricultural season on time.” Planting on time, thanks to purchasing his inputs on time through myAgro, made a big difference for Mr. Doumbia. “My field was the object of discussion in my village because of the astonishing harvest I had,” Mr. Doumbia said, showing me a fat corncob on which we counted 19 rows of kernels around. “More farmers decided to join the program thanks to my field, and to be able to pay for inputs without debts.”
