Meet Edisson Aguilar, CTO and Co-founder of Cultivando Futuro (Colombia)
Cultivando Futuro developed a digital platform that helps thousands of farmers throughout Colombia connect to buyers, creating a more transparent, knowledgeable and equitable value chain. The Covid crisis has highlighted the urgent need for this type of solution in many other countries – which is why Cultivando Futuro is now making part of their API openly and freely available to TFF’s global community of innovators. Their aim is to accelerate innovation through smallholder inclusion in every part of the world.
The Cultivando Futuro interface allows farmers to input details about their crops, such as the unit of crops or the harvest date. Based on this information, it can generate insights to help promote the farmers’ crops successfully on the market, identify key challenges, and connect them to buyer opportunities and partners. Starting in Colombia, the company is building the largest crop supply data set – and now, by opening their technology to TFF’s global community of over 20,000 innovators from 175 countries, they are initiating a leap forward to a new era of smallholder farmer-empowered agriculture.
Let’s take a look at the amazing story behind Cultivando Futuro and their remarkable achievements as a small team:
The CTO and Co-founder, Edisson, grew up in the countryside of Colombia, where his parents managed farms producing all different kinds of food: from strawberries and tomatoes to dairy and more. Edisson helped prepare the soil, plant crops under the hot sun, harvest and loaded the boxes with fresh produce. At times, he even got up early before school so he and his dad could complete the harvest before midday.
The tough conditions Edisson grew up with is what thousands of other Colombian farmers call their everyday routine.
He went on to study Systems Engineering – and paid for most parts of his education with the money his family earned through agriculture. In the end, he felt that his studies didn’t equip him with the tools needed to succeed in the real world. In true next-gen fashion, he started watching YouTube tutorials and reading blog posts to learn to code. After six months he had built his first mobile application which allowed farmers to calculate a fair price for their produce based on the initial investment they made.
It was at this time that Darío and Carlos, the two other co-founders of Cultivando Futuro, visited his family farm in Tenjo, in the Central Savanna Province. Shortly after meeting, they formed their team and began developing the first MVP of the Cultivando Futuro platform.
Their solution was built based on their personal experience living and seeing the hardships of being a farmer in the Colombian countryside.
They started their journey by asking the simple question: How can we provide farmers with the information they need to make smart planting, harvesting and selling decisions? They entered their solution into the TFF Challenge and accelerated it at the TFF Academy. Ultimately, they took home the Grand Prize and made countless connections with investors, partners and fellow changemakers. Now, they are giving back – showing the power of the next-gen innovation approach that TFF Community embodies. TFFers move fast, with a shared purpose and a commitment to open collaboration. This results in more positive impact for the food system challenges we face, which are becoming even more urgent in the wake of Covid.
Learn more about Cultivando Futuro on their website.