Earlier this fall, myAgro geared up for the full-scale launch of our vegetable program for farmers in Senegal. Since 2013, myAgro has been exploring vegetable packages for farmers to plant during the wet and dry seasons (summer and fall, respectively) to smooth year-round income and increase nutrition for farm families. Vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, and African eggplant are highly profitable and marketable as they are a significant part of every meal in the region, yet they are more technically difficult to grow successfully because of limited water access and soil quality. However past trials have shown impressive results, and we were ready to launch the program to all of our farmers in Senegal this year.
The vegetable program in Senegal launched in October with 3 weeks of mobilizing in 6 villages. As vegetables can be difficult to grow, myAgro developed a set of criteria to ensure farmers had the necessary structures in place to grow their vegetables successfully. We pre-qualified potential clients who had ready access to water and a fenced area large enough to grow a garden. The pre-qualifying process was also a great way to do marketing, and get farmers thinking about growing vegetables. After being pre-qualified, farmers came to enrollment days in Touba Toul, a larger village in Senegal. Although our initial enrollment numbers were lower than hoped for, we learned some important lessons, and looking forward, we plan to do mobile enrollment for a full week to get the numbers up. In past years, word-of-mouth has also been a big factor in farmers hearing about our program, so we believe more farmers will enroll for vegetables in the upcoming season after seeing the success of their fellow farmers.
For this year’s vegetable program, we used data from past seasons to develop ideal packet offerings. Over the past few seasons, myAgro has experimented with a variety of packet offerings, with a wide range of both prices and packet sizes. Because of heavy interest in past seasons, this year we doubled both the size of the packets and the price. All the vegetable packets on offer were 5,000 CFA and included seeds, fertilizer, a planting stick, trainings and follow up. We also offered hand tools, watering cans, and sprayers—materials that farmers had asked for in early trials that would aid them in their planting. As enrollment progressed, we noticed something interesting: despite the increase in cost, farmers were still enrolling for close to 2 packets each. This indicates that farmers not only see the value in planting vegetables, but also trust myAgro to provide quality inputs.
We are very excited to see the results of our first full-scale vegetable harvest in Senegal. In past years, farmers saw returns of $50-$250 on the $8-$16 vegetable packets they had invested in. This program has the potential to increase our farmers’ annual income by as much as 50%, in addition to increasing family nutrition.
