Believe it or not, but ~60% of the global food calories are produced by ~500 million farmers who own plots of land not much bigger than 2 hectares and trade through a dynamic network of non-transparent traders. These farmers are known as smallholder farmers. The supply chain from the farm to the factory still largely depends on word-of-mouth information, using either personal memory or pen & paper as only records. This leads to lost revenues and a lack of traceability, which in turn contributes significantly to illegal deforestation, for example. At PemPem, we build a mobile-based trading platform with embedded financing for smallholder farmers producing commodities for the world. Our platform is like a digital exchange, with integrated logistics and financing, as well as 100% traceability from farm to factory. We have offices in Montréal and Indonesia, and our trading platform is currently focused on palm oil in Indonesia.
