Entrepreneur Matches Farmers to Buyers “I am always asking myself, ‘What can I do better?’ Whatever the difficulties, I search and search for solutions…sometimes I even find solutions that I realize are not the best—but I toss it up to experience.” says George Sodjinou. His perseverance explains much of his agribusiness success today. George recalls a time when his first business failed and many of his peers left Togo to escape its many hardships. However, he rejected this option and instead contemplated his next venture. “I saw the demand for soy rising in my country. We were consuming soy milk and oil,” says George. Coming from a family of farmers, George valued farmers’ opinions, recalling, “They told me, they would prefer to grow soy instead of cotton, knowing they could always eat their soy if they couldn’t sell it.”
Seeing a possible opportunity in exporting soy, he formed a new company, ‘Agrinova’ and journeyed to neighboring countries in search of large soy processors. George’s investigative work proved worthwhile. In 2004, he was contacted by a processing plant in Ghana seeking to locate additional soy supplies for its operations, and he eventually contracted with two other major buyers, including a poultry farm, who needed large quantities of soy.
A Togolese
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1000s+ recently partnered with Agrinova to assist farmers in southern Togo. “They had the technicians who helped the cooperatives raise soy production, but they didn’t have anyone to purchase the final product,” says George. To address this dilemma, 1000s+ entered a cooperative agreement with Togolese bank, BRS. 1000s+ also provided George with skilled financial advisors to develop a business plan in support of a loan.
agribusiness, one
must concentrate on production and find new markets.
Taking this into consideration, George established a company for trading soy, Agrobusiness Contract (ABC). He sold 500 kilos of high quality soy seeds to local farmers, promising to purchase their crops at market price. Having already located a buyer, he was able to pay producers cash for their commodity. Impressed by his ability to match producers and buyers, a French NGO, Centre International de Development et de Reserche (CIDR) contracted George to identify buyers for their project’s soy farmers. In 1998, CIDR negotiated the acquisition of George’s enterprise. As part of his contract terms, he trained farmers to manage the operation themselves.
After several negotiations, BRS agreed to offer Agrinova 8,000,000 FCFA for the purchase of 90 tons of soy. This loan agreement was not only good news for George, but also for over 200 soy farmers and their families. “Once you have a buyer for the finished product from the producer, the cycle is completed,” says Mr. Sodjinou. Today only twenty percent of Agrinova’s soy is sold in Togo, the rest is exported to Ghana and Benin. But the increase in worldwide demand for soy means that this model can be replicated benefiting soy cooperatives throughout Togo.