Building a Digital Bridge Between Sri Lankan Farmers and Retailers: Conceptual Mobile Application Prototype

As an agricultural country, Sri Lanka has the potential for cultivation which uses 30% of the total labor force directly or indirectly. Hence there is a vacuum for an appropriate platform to integrate the farmers with other concerned parties also arming them with essential information to establish an effective and efficient process demanded by agriculture 4.0, also facilitating the novel distributed database or ledger technologies. This paper focuses on developing the “Agri Sri” mobile application that connects farmers with retailers, creating a marketplace to enable convenient and more efficient transactions, and providing essential information to the farmers. This approach aims to create an online market to minimize the effect of intermediaries while connecting farmers and retailers with a profitable price for their agricultural products allowing direct transactions between the two. With the proposed platform the farmers could find the right buyers at competitive open bids incorporating the blockchain distributed ledger technology. The proposed platform also allows for smarter synchronized product supply chains by leveraging the experiences of its users and finding innovative ways to improve the way they interact. The proposed platform also facilitates features like an online marketplace facilitating buying, selling, renting, database, prediction and analyzing, calling center, updates, and notifications. The “Agri Sri” also facilitates connecting and collaborating with retailers on market trends, pricing, and distribution methods with local retailers, providing real-time price comparison and location tracking features to help the rural economy. It is expected that the proposed platform will create a conducive environment with well-distributed facilities to support the seamless integration demanded by precision agriculture, the Internet of Things, and the utilization of big data to achieve a greater efficiency level demanded by the challenges of the rising population and climatic change issues.