The climate resilient agriculture (CRAgVc) old

The CRAg VC is an interactive platform for promising tech-enabled startups and growth-stage entities. We help these startups and entities scale up their solutions and strengthen climate resilience for smallholder farmers.

How can CRAg VC turbocharge ideas and partnerships for startups, accelerators, investors, donors, NGOs, and government organizations?

Startups focused on climate-resilient agriculture use the CRAg VC platform as a sounding board for ideas and plans, and attract investors and business partners. Get a first glimpse of new ideas, technology, and thinkers shaping CRAg in India and beyond. Identify inspiring peers and mentors to guide you on your journey. Throw your business problems at the platform’s network of experts, who will help solve them for you.

Accelerators, investors, and donors forge strategic partnerships to test, evaluate, and scale your ideas in the field. Access insights from experts with a deep understanding of the needs, aspirations, perceptions, and behavior of smallholder farmers.

Grab the attention of international funders and donors by showing evidence of your impact. NGOs and government programs with mass outreach. Join an international community practice using the CIFAR alliance and its links to the UN COP Summits.

How can you join CRAg VC, and how does the membership journey offers unparalleled opportunities?

• In Africa, Asia, and Latin America, there are over 800 active digital agriculture solutions for smallholder farmers. In 2021, Agritech sector investments in these countries exceeded USD 600M. India, Kenya, and Nigeria alone have over 50 Agtech solutions providing digital climate advisory services to the agriculture sector.
• Despite, advancements in the Agtech sector, as of 2019, smallholder farmers faced an annual funding gap of USD 170 B, which indicates missed opportunities by financial services providers. There are more than 570 M smallholder farms with less than 2 hectares. And less than 20% have access to formal insurance (excluding China).
• In order to empower existing and upcoming digitally-enabled Agritech (advisory, finance, market linkage, etc.) and complementary financial services and extension service providers to support smallholder farmers’ climate adaptation and resilience.
• CRAgVC offers a global virtual platform for catalytic change-makers to work together to create pathways for transformative changes in smallholder farmers’ climate adaptation and resilience by empowering the Agritech sector.

• Limited risk capital makes smallholder farmers reluctant to try new livelihood practices, hindering innovation adoption.
• In India, the adoption level of IoT adoption level ranges between 27% to 37% across the agriculture value chain

2) Lack of access to finance:

• Smallholder farmers have limited sources of income, short credit history, and no collaterals detaching them from the mainstream financial system.
• As of 2019, USD 170 B was the global gap in smallholder financing needs.

3) Awareness barriers:

• Smallholder farmers’ digital literacy is low globally posing a major barrier to adoption.
• In Kenya, the world’s leader in mobile money adoption, internet penetration until 2020 was 29.50%.

4) Institutional Barriers:

Stringent KYC norms, state-sponsored infringement of data privacy, and insufficient protection against online fraud are some of the key institutional barriers against smallholder farmers’ uptake of digital services.

• Worldwide, farms of less than one hectare, account for 70% of all farms.
• In India, 86.07%1 of farms are less than 2 hectares.
• As of 2020, the average farm productivity level in the developing world, particularly in Africa is at 1.65t/h is about 41% of the global productivity level of 4.07t/h.
• The IPCC AR6 WG II reports high confidence in climate change pressuring terrestrial food production systems, endangering food security in regions with historically low productivity levels.

These smallholder farmers are facing increased levels of climate hazards:

• Variability in summer monsoon in South Asia
• Fluvial flooding and prolonged inundation in the GBM Basin of Bangladesh and in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam and Cambodia
• Amplified droughts in West Central Asia and the Arabian Peninsula
• Increased fluvial flooding incidences in West Africa
• Decreased mean rainfall in North-Eastern Africa in parts of South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya
• Increased agricultural and ecological droughts in Central Africa
• Increased droughts in North and South-Central America and the Caribbean
• Delay in the arrival of South American monsoon in the 21st century.

• Smallholder farmers use 24% of agricultural land to produce 29% of the crops providing 32% of the world’s food.
• Smallholder farming is a stepping stone out of poverty, but smallholder farmers have limited resources. They have only a small role in causing climate change but are disproportionately impacted by it, making their lives even more precarious.
• Globally 70 million in developing markets have insurance and about 30 million are in India.
• In Sub-Saharan Africa, less than 3% of smallholder farmers are insured.
• To protect crops worth USD 60-80 B annually, smallholder farmers need to pay premiums worth USD 8-15 B.
• Complex products and inefficient delivery deter smallholders from subscribing to crop insurance, much lesser livestock insurance.
• Limited access to risk capital (financing) stifle smallholder farmers’ ability to shift to climate-smart agriculture.

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