Social agriculture: 7.5 million Kenyan farmers sell their produce through social media

At least 7.5 million registered farmers in Kenya, representing 22.5 per cent of 33 million registered farmers are selling their produce on social media. This is according to the Platform Livelihood Project, a survey by leading research and advisory firm, Caribou Digital. The project was carried out with the support of the Mastercard Foundation as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

According to the report, social media platforms have more users than dedicated digital agriculture platforms in the country. Indeed, more people use Facebook for agriculture than all dedicated agricultural platforms.

According to the survey result, the top three social media platforms used for agriculture in Kenya, are Facebook (62 per cent), YouTube (16.15 per cent), and WhatsApp (13.35 per cent). Only 3 per cent of respondents preferred dedicated digital agriculture platforms such as WeFarm. WeFarm, a popular digital agriculture platform, has less than 2 million users.

“Facebook advertising indicates that the number of users interested in agriculture is estimated to be 9.3 million. In other words, without any marketing specific to agriculture, social platforms have a wider reach than any dedicated digital agriculture platform,” the report noted.

A recent report by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) revealed that Kenya suffers about 40 per cent post-harvest food loss, contributing to limited access to nourishment.

Social agriculture breeding new farmers

Social agriculture, a term which describes the ways farmers use social media to support their agricultural livelihoods through digital platforms, is breeding new farmers exhibiting new behaviours. These new behaviours include selling information and expertise, positioning social agriculturalists as new providers of expertise and making them self-made digital extension workers. Extension workers are one area of agriculture that has witnessed a huge slowdown around Africa.

According to the report, a high proportion of survey participants (52 per cent) bought agricultural information through social media, while 27 per cent indicated that they used social media to sell information. Social agriculture lowers the barrier to sharing expertise and has enabled a new community of farmers to develop different strategies to monetize their new social position, complementing and disrupting extension workers and agronomists in the process.

“On Facebook and Twitter, Instagram and WeChat, YouTube and TikTok, and in countless WhatsApp groups, farmers around the world use everyday social media platforms to support their agricultural livelihoods. Through posts, shares, photos, and videos, they build and exchange knowledge, offer mutual support, and invent new markets and marketing channels. In Kenya, Facebook farming groups with hundreds of thousands of members have enough activity to shape agricultural markets, including what people grow and how much they get paid for their produce,” the report noted.

Social agriculture is also a breeding ground for harassment and false information

While social agriculture appears to address some gender imbalances by offering opportunities to female agriculturalists just as it does for male agriculturalists, digital platforms, however, present their own risks. One of those is harassment as they amplify risk for female farmers. The report noted that while digital marketplaces can be safer and easier for female farmers to participate in, at the same time they introduce new patterns of harassment.

Three in four survey respondents reported that they had seen bullying or abusive behaviour on social media in relation to agriculture. They also indicated that they had reported the abuse to Facebook. Mary, a farmer, describes how being online introduces new opportunities, but also introduces familiar patterns of harassment:

“You find on Facebook you have posted things to do with agriculture, then someone comes to your direct messages posting things like nudes there, and you are like, it is not even related [and] without your consent,” she said.

Another downside is that social media is a preferred platform for fake news peddlers. This is especially so for Meta’s Facebook, which is designed to maximize engagement, platforms often privilege content that is sensationalist or controversial rather than content that supports social agriculture, such as useful or trustworthy information. In this way, platforms function as intermediaries that shape agripreneurs’ livelihoods.

For example, respondents are of the opinion that 68 per cent of people who share agricultural information and 62 per cent of information shared on social media are untrustworthy.

“Facebook being without many restrictions and global is prone to fraud information for the sake of making sales,” one respondent said.

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