Here, this piece takes a look at the post COVID-19 era. It has been a challenging period for the entire world since the COVID 19 pandemic, a disrupting period for the world economy. The world of work is severely affected during this crisis. Therefore, all sections of society – including businesses, employers, and social partners – must play a role to protect workers, their families, and society at large. The next question would be, what happens to agribusinesses post Covid-19.
Post Covid-19: The Challenge
The nature and extent of the restrictions, such as on suspension of non-essential activities, differ between States and sectors. Still, a substantial proportion of workers either have to work from home. If their work cannot be performed at a distance, they often stay at home under an income replacement arrangement.
However, in the post-COVID-19 era, Can this be applicable for medium and small-scale farmers?
Large cooperations are gradually adopting work from home and remotely controlling key processes through their strong online presence.
Can a farmer manage his farm or processing facility remotely?
This article is about pinpointing some ways to position agribusiness online for easy and more excellent accessibility post-COVID-19 era.
Post Covid-19: Production
The production component of agric enterprises necessitates active human activities at different stages while marketing and sales can be driven through a well-managed online market place.
This pandemic is making us rethink and find ways to incorporate other work systems beyond physical space and presence in our businesses because more than ever, this is the time farming and every other business must go on, as we must feed and stay alive to fight the pandemic.
Since it is imperative to bring your agribusiness online, you also have to plan to keep it online. Your agribusiness shouldn’t be online just for the sake of being online, but rather your presence online should be serving or servicing a purpose or needs. You should develop or have:
- Marketing Strategy
- Customer Attraction and Retention Strategy
- Service Packaging and Delivering Strategy amongst others to be able to manage your agribusiness online successfully.
- Every agribusiness has ideal customers, i.e., people in need of the service or products you provide.
Post Covid-19: To be rightly positioned, you need to:
- Understand your Core Practice i.e., Area of Specialization (Vaccine Sales, Chicks Production and Sales, Egg Production and Sales, Consultation, etc.)
- Know what your customers like, what challenges they need help within your area of specialization (e.g., as a consultant, do you have farmers who are experiencing Gumboro Infection challenge and need help with that? or as a farmer do you have customers having challenges accessing fresh eggs?). Knowing what they like and the challenges they need help with enables you to provide solutions that are appreciated.
- There are various online platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter. Some persons are more active on some online platforms than on others, and you need to know the platform where your customers are active for effective engagement.
- Create an e-commerce website for your business, and be sure to make it operational and not dormant.
- Make sure your business is positioned on these online platforms and actively deliver content, solutions, and market your products and services.
- Engage your followers or customers, write educating posts on your area of specialization as often as possible, follow other pages and hashtags similar to yours, provide solutions to questions asked on your platforms and similar platforms your follow, and always make sure you stay relevant.
You have all to gain positioning your business online now and post-COVID 19. Why not start today, Mark Zuckerberg said: “Ideas don’t come out fully formed, they only become clearer as you work on them, you just have to get started.” You can start with Facebook or WhatsApp. When your customers know they can get you online, doing business becomes more accessible and more convenient.
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