Surveys through Social Media. Tackling the Real Challenges of Philippine Coffee Farmers
Kai Analytics partnered with Scott Tupper of Yave.io and Carmel Laurino and Lacy Audry of Kalsada Coffee to understand the pain points of Rural Philippine Coffee farmers, and how blockchain traceability technology can ease these challenges and ensure a supply chain that compensates all members fairly.
Overview
When we set out to understand the pain points of rural Philippine coffee farmers, we had 3 goals:
Gain first hand (“primary source”) insight on the challenges faced by micro, small, and medium sized enterprises in the Philippine Coffee Industry
Understand the role of technology in easing these challenges
Draft informed recommendations for governments and NGO’s to use when supporting the industry
By leveraging natural language processing, and working with our partners, we were able to gain real insight into the challenges of rural coffee farmers and produce real-world solutions that give them the best chance at success.
Informed the development of a Market Readiness Toolkit for Micro, Small, and Medium-sized enterprises.
We are solving public policy research-oriented problems with a business/data lens. This is a perspective that we wouldn’t normally take but [Kai Analytics] made our qualitative focused research product a lot better and more focused... Professional, Thorough, a Pleasure to Work With.
Improved data collection techniques to allow partner farmers to realize the true price of their crops, and eliminate dead weight middlemen.
What we did
We disseminated a custom survey to hundreds of Philippine Coffee Industry Stakeholders via social media and used the Net Promoter Score methodology to gauge the level of optimism across the industry. These survey responses also informed us of what Industry Stakeholders perceive to be their main challenges, and what actions need to be taken to help the industry experience healthy growth.
Showed government and NGO stakeholders how this technology can be used to guide policy decisions.
Learn how we can help inform intelligent policy design.
3 Big Highlights
Understanding the Problem
Data from surveys and interviews allowed us to target our solutions; mapping the process from farm to cup showed us key bottlenecks.
Industry data is of poor quality and lacks transparency
Continued Training and Financial Literacy would be a huge asset for farmers
Funding and market access support is often inefficient, partially due to poor data quality and lack of knowledge among policymakers
There is a severe lack of telecommunication infrastructure
A Real Solution
By working alongside our partners at Yave.io and Kalsada Coffee, we created a technological solution through blockchain-based software modules.
Identified key inefficiencies in export readiness for rural farmers
Informed the development of a Market Readiness Toolkit of Micro, Small, and Medium-sized enterprises
Improved data collection techniques to allow farmers to realize the true price of their crops, an increase of 40%, and eliminate dead weight middlemen
So What Happens Next?
We organized our findings in a publicly accessible report so that these insights can inform decisions around the world
As a part of the Project Advisory Committee, we will help consult on best practices for the implementation of this project going forward, including an Asia-Pacific Summit in 2021
