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The adoption of digital marketing by farmers has the ability to tackle the challenge of post-harvest losses that the country has struggled with for years.

This is the position of Bellefu.com, an online marketplace that insists that post-harvest loss is responsible for killing up to half of tomatoes, vegetables, and other perishable plants and fruits.

The Agricultural Activities Marketplace ensures that farmers, buyers and sellers of agricultural products have direct contact with other agro-allied suppliers and manufacturing industries around the world. It is also designed to make the search for agricultural products available at the touch of a button.

The team’s spokesman, Oluwaseun Olukumoro, said some of the losses were on farms, during harvest, while collecting, while others were during transportation, during unloading (due to poor handling) and at other times within the farm-to-fork transfer occur.

“It doesn’t just end with perishable goods, but also with raw materials like grain. It is estimated that post-harvest losses for grain vary between five and 20 percent; 20 percent for fish and even between 50 and 60 percent for tubers, fruit and vegetables.

“Post-harvest loss isn’t just a harvesting issue, it even affects dairy products. If you milk a cow and you don’t preserve it properly or process it within three hours, it will spoil completely. “

Olukumoro added that digitization and easy internet access have changed the face of agriculture forever and many in the industry are struggling to keep up with the new methods available to keep in touch with their customers.

He said digital marketing in agriculture would eliminate middlemen as farmers can contact buyers, wholesalers and distributors directly, “and this reduces the number of middlemen or middlemen in the supply chain. This leads to better price realization, better availability of crops and less scarcity.

“Farmers now have better and broader access to modern farming methods and techniques through online training and webinars. This knowledge will help them increase their productivity. At the same time, if properly trained, the farmer may be able to make this knowledge available to a wider audience in multiple national languages ​​by creating his or her blog or website and using social networking services to share this information. “

He said that digital marketing would be beneficial for farmers in the long run, in order to reach a wide audience and be visible to them. “At the same time, they come into contact with providers of post-harvest technologies such as transport, storage and packaging.

“In many cases, farmers need to ship their produce to local markets to reach buyers.”

However, digital marketing puts the farmer and his products on a global stage for every potential buyer / customer to see.