Grace Ashiru
SwiftVEE, a South African company that was one of the first to trade livestock, has released PrysWys, an app that will help farmers save money on inputs. PrysWys is a retail service that connects farmers directly to manufacturers of inputs. It is available in the Apple App Store, the Google Play Store, and the web. In some cases, this can cut costs by almost 50%.
Russel Luck, the CEO of swiftVEE, said that PrysWys was made to stop input costs for farmers from going up in the current economy. “After having a lot of success trading livestock online, we’ve noticed that farmers pay much more for their inputs at traditional stores. We think the best way to solve this problem is with digital technology.
With PrysWys, farmers can list all the products they need for their farms and receive electronic price quotes. Farmers can see prices, get their hands on products, and save money with this app.
Luck says that farmers can get any input at the best price from anywhere in South Africa. This gives them “unlimited choices for any input,” he says.
PrysWys has assembled an international network of companies that make inputs and sell their goods at wholesale prices through the platform. Farmers get direct-to-consumer input prices when they order online through the app. Even though they are in remote parts of South Africa, they get quotes from many suppliers.
Luck said that the average farmer who buys inputs from retailers has to pay for retail space, storage facilities, staff costs, and manual processes that aren’t very efficient. This can increase the cost of inputs by up to 50% before the retailer even adds its margin. Because of the war in Ukraine, gas prices are rising, and there aren’t as many products on the market. This makes the already high input costs for most farmers even worse.
Around the end of 2022, PrysWys went into BETA testing, and it already has more than 1,000 active users. Since it opened in January 2023, it has sold online products worth several million Rands. It takes advantage of the fact that it swiftly already has about 100,000 commercial farmers in its network.
The agricultural sector is vital to South Africa’s economy. It makes up about 2.5% of the country’s GDP and employs more than 5% of the population. In the past few years, the sector has dealt with many problems, such as droughts, land reform policies, and economic instability.
Luck said that the launch of PrysWys gives farmers a much-needed way to deal with their rising input costs, which have been made worse by the global pandemic. He said that it PrysWys would change the way agricultural technology is used.
Lowering the cost of inputs can help farmers’ finances and make them more competitive on the world market. It will also give small farmers a way to get the same information as their larger-scale counterparts.
