PHB grounds the focus of our work in digital agriculture with the realities of smallholder farmers. It is hard to grow and sell enough crop to support and feed a family. Managing cash flow is difficult, and that lures many millions to migrate to overcrowded urban centres in search of paid work, at least for a while.

We address these challenges with a combination of approaches built upon extensive experience digitizing value chains and working with smallholder growers of rice, chilly, coffee, cocoa, tea and dairy from Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nepal, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea to Uganda.  By starting with an Activity Based Costing assessment across the value chain and we can identify how the various actors can support, promote and benefit from digitization through inclusive participation: Our solutions will work if all actors see a positive Value Proposition. 

With these affirmative Value Propositions in place, additional interventions can provide layering of mobile information services regarding local information such as weather, market prices or pest management – like the farmers having an ‘electronic agricultural extension worker’ always by their side. To further expand to rural and remote areas – PHB brings insights to promote conducive ecosystems of local government, extension workers, payment processors and merchants to serve as the backbone for sustainable, rural digital economies.