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Word of our CEO
After a year of learning, the year of growth has come
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2017 was a hectic, challenging but important year in which we laid the foundation for the success of Impact Terra. We moved from a 5 person team with a minimal viable product to a (semi-)professional organization with almost 15 people, strong partnerships and a decent amount of users. Impact Terra became real for us - while Myanmar went through a challenging year with respect to ethnic conflicts, economic growth and the resulting global pressure.
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We believe that we can have a real and sustained positive impact on people's lives, and therefore we did not stop pursuing our vision of building a thriving and sustainable smallholder agriculture sector.
We believe that by digitally empowering smallholders this can be achieved.
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We launched our Golden Paddy app at the end of 2016 and started actively connecting farmers in the beginning of 2017. Since then we have grown our Facebook reach to almost 3 million unique people per month, have registered users in 97% of all townships and have build a strong team of motivated local and foreign experts. We have build a strong pipeline of projects and longer term programs. Some of these are now confirmed and in motion, others will be soon. Besides, we have been able to attract a very experienced COO - bringing in more strategic and management capacity. This has already helped me and the team to spend more time on strategy, business development and funding - while guaranteeing proper execution of projects and further development of our services for farmers.
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2017 was a year of significant learning: learning where to focus and where not. With a stronger team, strategic partnerships and supporting funding, 2018 might become a game changing year. A year in which we will proof that small-holder farmers can be served at scale by utilizing the latest technologies and developing innovative impact / business models. We will focus on a select number of services that bring real value to our users and further develop business models that sustainable fund them.
I am looking forward to a very exciting year ahead. I hope you will be part of our continued journey!
Happy new year!
Erwin Sikma
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Press Coverage this month
'Smartphone apps ring changes in Myanmar'
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Mr Denis D. Gray, writing for the Nikkei Asian Review travelled all across Myanmar the past few months.
He reports on how the telecom revolution has transformed farmers' access to information and markets. Ofcourse he spoke to our CEO, Erwin, about Golden Paddy. Click on the button to read an insightful piece on how farmers benefited from one of the world's most rapid proliferations of mobile phones.
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Projects
First trainingsessions for mungbean farmers
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In December, we spent 4 days in the field in Thongwa meeting farmers along with our partners on the VegImpact project (Advance, East-West Seed and Bright Light).
We took the time to not only introduce Golden Paddy to farmers, but to talk to them to understand their farming needs as well as feedback on the application. We talked with farmers about their information and access needs with regards to the weather, pest and disease
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advice, farming services such as day labour and market prices.
For instance, farmers highly value weather information as it allows them to make better decisions with regards to farm management, whether it'd be the timing of spraying of chemicals or sequencing of harvesting. We will be incorporating what we learned directly from our users into our product development going forward.
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Vacancy
We are looking for a Maize expert
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Through the Australian Volunteer Program we are looking for an Agronomist to join our team. Help Impact Terra provide farmers with demand-driven insights and actionable advice.
- As this vacancy is part of the Australian Volunteers Program, only Australian citizens can apply -
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