With the mission to empower and educate the farmers of the world, a Greek Start-up, ”Wikifarmer,” began its journey in 2018 and has become a go-to virtual place for the farmers and the entrepreneurs of the agricultural and food sector.
With a passion for a sustainable and efficient way of cultivation and crop production and the eagerness to help the farmers increase their income and take advantage of e-commerce, the three founders, Petros Sangos, Harry Parianou, and Hlias Sousi, created Wikifarmer.
The dual nature of this online platform offers a 360o solution for the modern needs of farmers globally. The user can visit the online Library of Wikifarmer and browse free of charge the wide variety of agricultural-related topics and articles that it offers.
From practical cultivation manuals to explanatory articles concerning new techniques and basic theory, Wikifarmer’s user-generated content can be exploited both by amateurs and professional farmers. To make the knowledge even more accessible to everyone, Wikifarmer offers a translated version of each article in 14 languages already, aiming to reach 20 by the end of 2022.
Having all this in mind, it is no wonder that the Wikifarmer’s Library won the recognition of the International Food and Agriculture Organization (F.A.O.) of the United Nations and was characterized as ”The Wikipedia of farming.”
Thus, until the end of 2021, the platform has attracted over 11.5 million visitors worldwide, helping farmers from 237 countries upgrade their production and become much more efficient and sustainable.
Based on the rapid developments in agricultural production and the challenges of the digital transformation of agriculture, the Greek Startup presented in early 2020 the Wikifarmer Market Place, a modern digital platform where every producer can create a profile and upload, for-free, his/her products and gain direct access to the domestic and international market. To help its members, the Market Place is already available in 5 languages (English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Greek) and numbers more than 6,000 registered farmers and 18,500 products.
”The Wikifarmer Market Place has enabled farmers to sell their produce directly to businesses, traders, and consumers. Wikifarmer’s trading platform has proven to be a particularly valuable solution to producers and professional farmers, especially during the difficult period of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It enabled them to create more distribution channels for their products, gain direct access to consumers and reduce their dependence on wholesalers and intermediaries, increasing their profitability by up to 300%.”, mentions the co-founder and agronomist Peter Sagos.
All these data prove the strong social impact of Wikifarmer, which is based on environmental sustainability, the effort to increase farmers’ income and productivity, as well as its active role in the reduction of food waste and the financial inclusion for underrepresented groups, like women, etc.
Despite all these achievements, the Wikifarmer team does not rest. To reinforce its sustainability profile, Wikifarmer is constantly enriching its network with partners having a similar vision. Universities, institutions, N.G.O.s, farmers’ organizations, and companies, from Brazil to South Africa, the U.S.A., India, the Philippines, and the Netherlands are joining forces to unravel global and local needs and create new high-quality and practical content-solutions to address them.
The new section of the Library, which will be available within the first two months of 2022, will be devoted exclusively to sustainability topics, like regenerative and organic agriculture, agroforestry, integrated pest management techniques, on-farm preservation of biodiversity, and many more. Stay tuned!
