By assignment of IDH Sustainable Trade Initiative, Agri-Logic conducts 4 farmer segmentation studies to optimise service delivery by Supply Chain Management companies to farmers, in order to increase the impact at farmer level.

Many supply chain companies offer services to smallholder farmers to improve productivity, quality and profitability at farm level, and to secure their supply. The effect of these services at farm level is mixed and there is a strong desire to improve their performance. One way to do this is to group farmers in segments based on household and farmers characteristics. These segments are likely to have differing needs, development potential, ambition levels and investment rationales. When these segments are defined, services could possibly be better targeted and return on investment of service delivery could be improved.

The objective of this project is to gain experience with farmer segmentation exercises and to share the learnings of these experiences to support supply chain partners and IDH to segment farmers. Additionally, we aim to develop tailor-made services and products in order to increase the return on investment for supply chain partners, farmers and organizations that are co-investing in service delivery models. Four segmentation case studies are performed with coffee and cocoa supply chain partners in West- and East-Africa.

The envisioned results are:

  • For each segmentation case study: identification of farmer segments, their defining characteristics and recommended tailor-made service packages
  • A set of guidelines on how to monitor effects of service packages on different farmer segments and knowing when to change a strategy
  • A framework for organisations on how to realize effective farmer segmentation to optimise service delivery