Agri Equipment On Tap, Online

The cost of farm machinery is a major challenge for small-scale and commercial farmers. Nick Hoffman, general manager at Linebooker, and Jehiel Oliver, creator of Hello Tractor, explain how new digital platforms are being used to source equipment with ease.

- Glenneis Kriel

Digital technology, such as the Internet, social media, smartphones and GPS, is revolutionising how people connect and conduct business. One of the most remarkable developments to emerge from this is crowdsourcing: acquiring a range of services from suppliers in the community and using the Internet to link these with customers. Uber, which has upended how taxi services work, comes to mind. So does Airbnb, an alternative to booking traditional travel accommodation.

This trend has begun to emerge in the agricultural sector too. A year ago, South African cold storage company, CSS Logistics, launched Linebooker, an online bidding platform based in Cape Town that connects farmers to transport service operators. According to its general manager, Nick Hoffman, Linebooker removes the economic inefficiencies of transporting crops.

CHANGING THE SYSTEM FOREVER

 Due to the nature of harvesting, there is often enormous demand for transport at specific periods in specific regions, explains Hoffman. In the citrus season, for example, farmers have only a four-month window to get limes and tangerines to market; this creates truck shortages during overlapping peak seasons among different crops.

An additional problem is that transporting agricultural produce to cold storage is a one-way journey; return trips for the transporters are limited. Online bidding makes truck supply and demand more transparent, offering opportunities to fill trucks that would otherwise be empty.

Using the Linebooker platform is easy. Users, namely transport suppliers and those looking for transport, register to ensure they are credible and comply with minimum basic requirements.