Service provider/consulting company

aWhere, Inc. is a data management company who has created a web based location intelligence platform, which provides visualization and data analysis tools to help organizations manage risk. Additionally, the Platform offers free, interactive access to weather data, which enables agricultural practitioners to better manage risk and make evidence-based decisions based on historical, current day, and forecasted weather data and weather alerts.

MFarm Ltd is a software solution and agribusiness company. Our main product M-Farm, is a transparency tool for Kenyan farmers where they simply SMS the number 20255 (Safaricom Users) to get information pertaining to the retail price of their products, buy their farm inputs directly from manufacturers at favorable prices, and find buyers for their produce.

Our product, M-Farm, works as a transparency tool for farmers. M-Farm was launched after winning the IPO48 competition — a 48 hour boot-camp event aimed at giving web/mobile start-ups a platform to launch their start-ups.Of the 37 initial ideas, M-Farm took away the €10,000 prize as capital investment.

What we do

1. Enable farmers to inquire current market prices of different crops from different regions and/or specific markets.
2. Aggregate farmers needs/orders and connect them with farm input suppliers.
3. Enable farmers to sell collectively and connect them with a ready market.

The Live Rice Index is a global provider of information on the rice industry and a leading source of benchmark price assessments for this commodity market. Since 2011 The Live Rice Index has provided accurate information and insights that assist our readers in making sound trading and business decisions whilst enabling the rice markets throughout the world to operate with greater transparency and efficiency.

Our UK office liaises with industry members based in every major and minor rice-producing regions in the world to create a network of participants, who are working to increase transparency in the rice industry.

The Live Rice Index (LRI) publishes almost 100 price assessments as well as news, market data, analysis, market commentary and research daily. The LRI Market Report is our primary reporting method but we also reach our end users through a number of other social mediums.

EARS Plant Photosynthesis Monitoring Ltd has carried out research into the application of chlorophyll fluorescence since 1983. The first hand held photosynthesis meter was launched in 1992. Since then we have continued research and development in this field, with a focus on measuring technique and practical application. Therefore do not expect a long list of fluorescence parameters on this site. We do not refer to them if they are purely theoretical and have no practical meaning.

The Photosynthesis Meter

The EARS Plant Photosynthesis Meter (PPM) measures the photo-synthetic light use of plants. Because of its low weight, the instrument is very suitable for use in laboratory and field. Just press the button and the measurement is completed within a second. In addition long measuring series can be done automatically. For this reason the PPM has a wide range of applications in research, education and practice.

Applied GeoSolutions, LLC (AGS) provides scientifically sound, cutting-edge geospatial technologies and integrated spatial information services for resource management and the decision-making process. 

AGS is a focused group with experience and specialized skills in the design and application of biogeochemical models and geospatial technologies. They work with a variety if end-users and clients to generate customized solutions for the decision making process. 

AGS was formed in 2000 to provide consulting services and training for environmental applications of geospatial technologies. AGS is a private for-profit business that works with international organizations, academic institutions, government agencies, industry, and private clients. AGS was originally formed in response to the growing need for improved environmental and resource management information. AGS provides and uses advanced geospatial tools and models to provide necessary information to our clients.

In collaboration with colleagues in the Sustainable Development Network and across the Bank, ARD works to reduce poverty through sustainable rural development. To this end, ARD provides analytical and advisory services to the Bank's regions on a wide range of agriculture and rural development topics.

These services include the preparation and implementation of the ARD Action Plan, monitoring of the Bank's portfolio of agriculture and rural projects, and promoting knowledge sharing among agriculture and rural development practitioners, inside and outside the Bank, in order to continually improve the Bank's activities in rural areas.

Implementing Agriculture for Development, World Bank Group Agriculture Action Plan: FY2010-12 is the follow up to the broad consensus represented by World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development. It outlines the scaled-up World Bank Group commitment to support the improvement of agriculture’s contribution to food security, to raise the incomes of the poor, to facilitate economic transformation, and to provide environmental services. It builds upon previous themes found in Reaching the Rural Poor, the 2003 Agriculture and Rural Development Strategy. 

Following the insights of the World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development, it gives greater attention to:

• Increasing agricultural productivity, especially of poor smallholders, for greater progress in rural poverty alleviation;
• Differentiating the mix of support across the three “country worlds” of agriculture; and
• The role of agriculture in providing environmental services, including agriculture in the context of climate change.

Conventional maize and wheat breeding is at the heart of CIMMYT's work and accomplishments. This involves the painstaking, controlled cross-pollination of promising plant types or those containing specific traits of interest. Hundreds of thousands of the progeny from such crosses are grown on experiment stations under controlled infections, drought, heat, low-fertility conditions, or other stresses to see which perform well. Most plants are discarded; those selected are re-crossed, and the process is repeated. 

Modern breeding essentially parallels the selection performed by the ancient farmers who thousands of years ago domesticated maize and wheat from wild grasses. But now the process is supported by cutting-edge experimental designs, statistical analyses, molecular markers (DNA signposts for genes of interest), and other advanced science. The work also depends on the free, global exchange of seed, and a worldwide network of partners who test CIMMYT's experimental maize and wheat varieties at their locations and return data on those varieties' performance. 

CIMMYT's work is centrally related to agricultural risk management  and some of their projects include: creating drought tolerant maize in Africa, working in effective grain storage, and creating insect resistant maize for Africa. 

AgTools is designed as a resource to assist agricultural producers manage financial risks.  Agricultural producers often make large up-front investments in production equipment or new technologies in hopes of making a reasonable return on their investment. Misjudging the costs and potential returns of such investments can result in serious financial difficulty. However, adequate compensation can come to those who have the information, develop strategies, and perform sensitivity analyses before implementing a decision. The decision-making tools on AgTools.org aim to help agricultural crop producers make better decisions to manage the financial risk in agriculture.

Farmers face multiple, often simultaneous, sources of risk - weather, market prices, disease, regulations and more. In view of this, a farmer's business strategy must comprise some form of risk management. OECD works on risk management in agriculture by advising governments on policies that can empower farmers to manage their own business risks. OECD analysis calls for a holistic approach to risk management that focuses on the interactions between different types of risks, the strategies undertaken by farmers, and the whole set of government policies that impact on risk management.

The World Bank's Rural Finance Department works to manage risks in financing agriculture because of the view that financial services are key to enhancing economic development and reducing poverty in rural areas. Access to key financial services such as savings, credit insurance, leasing and remittance facilities is generally scarce in rural areas of most developing countries and access is particularly limited for poor households and for micro, small, and medium enterprises. Rural Finance understands the characteristics behind such underserved areas and works to remedy inadequate knowledge among service providers operating in a rural environment and insufficient products tailored to rural needs makes the availability of financial services in rural areas scarcer. Additionally, Rural Finance works to bridge the gap in the supply of credit services limited by lack of collateral and lack of risk management mechanisms.