Aurelia grows carrots on the plateau outside Lospalos. This year's crop is her best yet.
Growing them was never the hard part. The hard part is who decides what they're worth.Lospalos is as far east as Timor-Leste goes. The buyers who pay properly are in Dili.
“Recent heavy rains have damaged many roads and bridges in the country, disrupting people's access to markets.”
— Asian Development Bank, Timor-LesteCarrots start losing value the moment they leave the ground. Aurelia has two days. Three, at most.
One week the river takes the crossing. The next, the hillside slides onto the road, and no truck from Dili will risk it.
One truck makes it up the hill. The driver names his price. She can't check it, and there's no one else to ask.
Aurelia isn't the only one on that road. Her neighbours are carrying carrots too.
Put their harvests together and they fill a truck. Now the buyers come to them, and have to compete.
of 239 studies found that farmer organisations raised their members' incomes.
Bizikova et al., “A scoping review of the contributions of farmers' organizations to smallholder agriculture”, Nature Food, 2020One farm takes the price it's given. A full truck names its own.
One shipment to where the fair prices are, instead of every family making the trip.
Seed, fertiliser and transport cost less, bought for twenty farms at once.
“Farmers who are already marginalized because of poor education, land access, social status and market accessibility may require additional support … before they are able to benefit.”Bizikova et al., Nature Food, 2020
The benefits are real. Getting there is slow, expensive and exclusive, and it ends in a fight over power.
Dure is a temporary, easy farmers' union, run by text message. Nobody is made to join, and anyone can leave whenever they like.
The inspector's grade is the one that gets paid.
Buyers pay into a mobile-money holding account before pickup.
We start with a handful of buyers in Dili who agree to bid on every lot.
Dure books the truck and the pickup point. It can't fix the road, and doesn't pretend to.
The small AI solution for cooperatives. Plain text messages, buyers who have to compete, and farmers who decide, every time.
Try the demo →Later, maybe. Harvest savings, seed on credit, buying fertiliser together. None of it is in the first version.
Not the first to try. Phones have helped farmers sell together before, M-Farm in Kenya among them. Dure asks whether a little AI can make the coordination light enough that nobody needs a formal cooperative to do it.