Investors’ appetite for short-term investment a driving force for digital agriculture investment platforms – Operators

Operators of most digital agriculture investment platforms in the country have said that one of the driving forces behind their investment platforms can be traced to investors’ appetite for the short-term investment plan.

Another contributing factor behind investors’ appetite is that there are stipulated dates or period of return on investment (R.O.I) attached to the various farm projects which are responsible to the surge of interest among investors in recent times.

The digital agriculture investment platform business started in 2016 with the aim by most operators to provide improved quality seeds to farmers, boost farm inputs and improved harvests, ensure food security in the country, adoption of mechanized farming by most smallholder farmers, improvement of farmers’ livelihood and opportunity for investors in the agriculture sector.

The various farm projects investors are putting their monies on include poultry, grain farms (rice, soybean and maize), tuber crops (sweet potato and cassava), ginger, tomato, pepper, and livestock farming.

According to Helen from Farmcrowdy who spoke to business a.m., she said the drive behind the platform can be traced to the investment opportunity the business presents adding that it is investors that determine the drive of the business.

“The platform presents to prospective investors on which farm projects they want to invest in with a stipulated period 6, 9 and 12 months of Return of Investment (R.O.I) on various farm projects such as rice farms, poultry, cash crops, and other produce.

“Also, we don’t have control of farms that are sold out on our website; they are sold out because the stipulated time for investors to put their monies has elapsed, so investors wait for the maturity of their investment before they get their profits,” Helen said.

On most platforms, the figures on R.O.I vary; the longer the duration of investment that an investor chooses on a particular farm project the more the return.

For Farmcrowdy, it offers investors 11 percent returns on poultry farm within a six months duration at N60, 000 while for rice farm; 13 percent returns with six months.

According to one of the operators of Thriveagric, she said most of their investors prefer to go for the short-term investment because they want their money immediately.

“Our investors put their monies on most of the short-term farm projects because of their appetite of an immediate return; they wouldn’t want to put their monies in a project farm for so long due to the fact that there may be an urgent need to use the money to execute one or two things.

“However, the short-term investment has the lowest returns while the long-term has the highest return of investment,” she said.

Meanwhile, Thriveagric offers its investors a 15 percent return on poultry farm project within a six months duration while 20 percent on grain farm projects within nine months duration.

Similarly, the new digital agriculture investment platform can become a haven for investors who do not rely on bonds and shares due to the economic realities in the country.

However, the platform is gradually boosting investing investors’ confidence because of the predictability and security of return of investment also, agriculture, which is the government’s main focal point in diversifying the economy should be a thing of interest for prospective investors.