Cropital

About

Cropital is a financial platform for smallholder farmers, serving as an alternative to predatory loan sharks. Cropital enables value chain financing, which improves profitability of farmers and decreases risks for lenders.

Cropital enters a community by establishing a local program that gathers farmer’s details, led by a community manager. Each farmer is assessed and given a credit score, then Cropital makes recommendations to both the farmer and a lender about how a mutually beneficial arrangement can be structured. Funding comes from a crowdsourced pool of lenders, who want to support farmers through fair financing.

Capability and features

Farmers are able to join a contract growing program whereby they have access to low-interest loans (typically at rates of approx. 12%), interventions that can increase yields, appropriate financial products and fair market prices for their harvests.

Lenders may select and lend directly through the Cropital’s crowdfunding platform. Lenders receive impact updates on the farmer they lent money to, along with fixed interest returns, upon farmer’s harvest/payment.

Traders are contract growing partners who commit to purchase the produce of farmers at fair market price. This creates an assurance for specific varieties of crop, which are secured through an agreement as part of the program.

Progress to date

Cropital has raised over USD600k of loans for farmers, and has acquired over 37,000 individual lenders on the platform.

To date, over 600 farmers are onboard.