This is a YouTube video titled "John Deere Africa Middle East | SMART | Overcoming challenges side-by-side with farmers" containing a presentation or talk focused on the SMART initiative by John Deere to address challenges faced by African farmers, including mechanization, access to finance, reliability, training, and technology. The speaker explains the components of the initiative and how it supports small-scale farmers.
Some of the biggest challenges farmers in Africa face is access to finance and access to good mechanization for their production. What we did at John Deere is we came up with a SMART initiative to help solve some of those challenges that farmers are facing. The SMART initiative is an acronym for Solutions for farmers. Mechanization, access to finance, reliability for better yield, and then training and technology. So what the S means in solutions is that we are looking at solutions to help farmers grow their business, even if they have a small land. For example, the contractor model. Contractor model allows the farmer to work his small land, but also help the farmers around him. Then we're looking at the mechanization for better yield. So these farmers are sometimes having not good mechanization on their farm. So we come with the best mechanization for what they need, access to funding. It means that we want to create farmers that is not bankable and make them bankable in order for them to grow and sustain their businesses. Then when you look at the R, we talk about reliability for the mechanization. We don't want to put out the product that we can't, can't service. That's why John Deere has invested a lot in dealerships around Africa. We make sure that we can service all the units and products that we put out on the ground. The last one is the T for training and technology. It is crucial for us to make sure that once we put a product down or a unit down on the ground, that we train our farmers, that we make sure they use it optimally, and that also we give them the best technology to what their circumstances allow. And that, in short, is what the smart initiative is about.
