Cocoa farmers
The cocoa farmers are a large group (2.3 million) of people, which contain several smaller groups of cocoa farmers. The groups are divided over income and the scale of their farm. But in general the cocoa farmers are very poor, they belong to the poorest people of Ghana. Long days of hard work and the success of the harvest depend on the weather. For growing the cocoa trees there is water needed, but not too much. And when cocoa pods are picked, the seeds inside need to be dried, therefore their needs to be sun and not too much wind. Because of the fact the farmers need to work so hard and their hard work could be destroyed by unknown weather, it is not a popular job anymore. Children of farmers move towards the big cities to seek for a better life. For this business model the customer segment will be the small holders farmers in the surrounding of Kumasi. For the research we will
be in contact with the farmers of the LBC ‘Kuapa Kokoo’, which contain 100.000 farmers in total.
A day of a farmer
Justice Obini is a cocoa farmer in Ghana; his 5.7 hectares farm is in the village of Burko. “I do everything on my own,” Obini says, which means waking up before dawn every morning to weed his fields and spray them with fertiliser. He spends hours pulling cocoa pods from trees and cracking them open. When he can afford it, Obini will hire occasional seasonal help, but most of the time he tends alone. Several of his children have moved out and others are too young to assist him on the farm. [Richards, 2014]
Knowledge of the costumer is key for an entrepreneur, according to Scott Shane. He has several propositions about this subject, but the one who is the most interesting for us is that ‘People’s prior knowledge about how to serve markets will influence their discovery of how to use a new technology to serve a market.’[Shane, 2000] Since we already know the market, this proposition aims that we should know everything about it. Knowledge is indeed key, to know how to serve the cocoa farmers best. We also have to think about how the cocoa farmers will react on the Farmer Forecast idea and what is the most interesting and valuable way to enter this market. However, what can happen is that the farmers do not actually realise what is important for them. As Henry Ford said it: “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said ‘a faster horse.’”. Although people cannot always tell themselves what they really want, their behaviour and actions give invaluable clues of their unmet wishes. [Brown & Wyatt, 2010] How could we convince the cocoa farmers that they need this service?
LBCs
There is a lot of LBCs spread of the country, but most of them are located in the neighbourhood of Kumasi. Since most cocoa farms are located there as well. LBCs are companies who collect the cocoa beans and cell them. In order to collect the cocoa beans, an LBC send an errand-boy, mostly family related, towards the farmers. The errand-boy pays the farmers in cash from the LBC, the price per bag is fixed. The errand-boy brings the bags of cocoa beans back to the LBCs storage. When enough is collected, a lorry gets loaded and travels towards cocoobod, where it is being sold to chocolate brands.
There are several LBCs, some of them have certifications like ‘Kuapa KooKoo Ltd.’, and some do not like ‘Olam Ghana Ltd.’. The certificated LBCs are able to ask more money for their cocoa, and so they are also able to pay the farmer more money if the farmer is certificated as well.
In order to convince the LBCs to be part of this project, it is needed to satisfy them. So then it is also needed to know how this project could satisfy them. In Ghana, it is needed to get in a conversation with several LBCs, certificated or not, to get to know their needs.
Within in our research in Ghana, we want the know if our business model contains enough value for the costumers. Steven Blank described a good possible way to obtain the interest of customers in our service and test out hypothesis; he calls this approach customer development. ‘Go out and ask potential users, purchasers, and partners for feedback on all elements of the business model, including features, pricing, distribution channels, and affordable costumer acquisition strategies. The emphasis is on nimbleness and speed: New ventures rapidly assemble minimum viable product and immediately elicit costumer feedback. Then, using costumers’ input to revise their assumptions, they start the cycle over again. Testing designed offerings and making further small adjustments or more substantial ones to ideas that are not working. [Blank, 2013]