Value-Added Options in Agriculture in Smart Villages

Value-added activities and processes in the agriculture and food chain in the village and rural communities are essential and critical for earning the honest moniker of being a “smart village”. Inherent and embedded at the core of any true value-added options and solutions for agriculture and food chain (AFC) deployed in smart village must be attributes that will make the ecosystem less volatile, more resilient, increase the economic and social returns and reduce the risks facing the village, the producers and the processors. In our experience, and based on our proprietary field research, it is therefore imperative that smart village agriculture solutions address the three sources of volatility – volume/yield, pricing/margin, and credit/financing – adequately and effectively to build resilience and drive superior long-term economic returns. Therefore, value-added solutions for agriculture need to focus on Infrastructure development, Information management, Innovation deployment, and Industry advancement (the 4 I’s), in that sequence. Against that evidence, it is therefore incomplete and ineffective and we daresay even myopic to focus on purely technology-based solutions as a priority for creating a value-added agriculture and food ecosystem in smart farms and smart villages.