Digitizing supply chains to lift farmers out of poverty
Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2020 11:17 am
SourceTrace offers a suite of software tools to improve the profitability, sustainability, and transparency of agricultural supply chains around the world.
Millions of cocoa farmers live in poverty across western Africa. Over the years, these farmers have been forced to contend with geopolitical instability, predatory loan practices, and a general lack of information that hampers their ability to maximize yields and sell crops at fair prices. Other problems, such as deforestation and child labor, also plague the cocoa industry.
For the last five years, however, cocoa supply chains in villages around the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, and Ghana have been transformed. A suite of digital solutions have improved profitability for more than 200,000 farmers, encouraged sustainable and ethical production practices, and made cocoa supply chains more traceable and efficient.
The progress was enabled by SourceTrace, a company that helps improve agricultural supply chains around the world. SourceTrace offers tools to help manage and sell crops, buy and track goods, and trace products back to the farms where they were made.
Through partnerships with farmer cooperatives, financial institutions, governments, and consumer brands, SourceTrace has impacted more than 1.2 million farmers across 28 countries.
CEO Venkat Maroju MBA ’07 believes the company’s success comes from the idea that the only way to improve one part of agricultural supply chains is to improve every part.
“The whole idea of our platform is to make the agricultural value chain sustainable, predictable, profitable, equitable, and traceable,” Venkat says.
Illuminating supply chains
Maroju grew up in a rural region of Telangana in southern India in what he describes as “very humble beginnings.” When it rained, his school was cancelled. He also studied in the local language until 12th grade, adding to the difficulty of his college entrance exam.
Through an affirmative action program, Maroju earned admittance to an engineering university, and his English improved over the next four years. He went on to get his master’s degree at the Indian Institute of Science and later came to the United States to pursue his PhD at Old Dominion University in Virginia.
Following his PhD, Maroju stayed in the U.S., but he became active in the politics of his home region of Telangana, including in that area’s push for statehood, which was achieved in 2014.
During that time, Maroju learned a lot about the hardships associated with small plot farming, the main profession for more than 60 percent of the people in the Telangana region. Over the last two decades, such farmers have had to contend with dramatic changes to agricultural policies following the country’s economic liberalization, as well as predatory lending practices that have led to a large number of farmer suicides.
In 2005, Maroju came to MIT for his MBA with the Sloan Fellows Program. As part of his thesis, he studied microfinance in India and considered how the rise of cell phone ownership offered an unprecedented opportunity to help people in rural areas.
“I always had a lot of passion for social issues,” Maroju says. “Coming from a humble background, I’ve seen the struggles of poverty.”
Millions of cocoa farmers live in poverty across western Africa. Over the years, these farmers have been forced to contend with geopolitical instability, predatory loan practices, and a general lack of information that hampers their ability to maximize yields and sell crops at fair prices. Other problems, such as deforestation and child labor, also plague the cocoa industry.
For the last five years, however, cocoa supply chains in villages around the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, and Ghana have been transformed. A suite of digital solutions have improved profitability for more than 200,000 farmers, encouraged sustainable and ethical production practices, and made cocoa supply chains more traceable and efficient.
The progress was enabled by SourceTrace, a company that helps improve agricultural supply chains around the world. SourceTrace offers tools to help manage and sell crops, buy and track goods, and trace products back to the farms where they were made.
Through partnerships with farmer cooperatives, financial institutions, governments, and consumer brands, SourceTrace has impacted more than 1.2 million farmers across 28 countries.
CEO Venkat Maroju MBA ’07 believes the company’s success comes from the idea that the only way to improve one part of agricultural supply chains is to improve every part.
“The whole idea of our platform is to make the agricultural value chain sustainable, predictable, profitable, equitable, and traceable,” Venkat says.
Illuminating supply chains
Maroju grew up in a rural region of Telangana in southern India in what he describes as “very humble beginnings.” When it rained, his school was cancelled. He also studied in the local language until 12th grade, adding to the difficulty of his college entrance exam.
Through an affirmative action program, Maroju earned admittance to an engineering university, and his English improved over the next four years. He went on to get his master’s degree at the Indian Institute of Science and later came to the United States to pursue his PhD at Old Dominion University in Virginia.
Following his PhD, Maroju stayed in the U.S., but he became active in the politics of his home region of Telangana, including in that area’s push for statehood, which was achieved in 2014.
During that time, Maroju learned a lot about the hardships associated with small plot farming, the main profession for more than 60 percent of the people in the Telangana region. Over the last two decades, such farmers have had to contend with dramatic changes to agricultural policies following the country’s economic liberalization, as well as predatory lending practices that have led to a large number of farmer suicides.
In 2005, Maroju came to MIT for his MBA with the Sloan Fellows Program. As part of his thesis, he studied microfinance in India and considered how the rise of cell phone ownership offered an unprecedented opportunity to help people in rural areas.
“I always had a lot of passion for social issues,” Maroju says. “Coming from a humble background, I’ve seen the struggles of poverty.”