Community Stories

Meet Edisson Aguilar, Farmer and Co-Founder of Cultivando Futuro

Edisson is a farmer. He is also a self-taught software developer and the CTO & co-founder of an exciting ag startup in Colombia.

Edisson’s story is the story of Cultivando Futuro. He has taken his technical skills and used his agricultural background to develop a platform that will help thousands of farmers throughout Colombia make smarter farming decisions. By connecting farmers directly to buyers, he is creating a more transparent, knowledgable, and equitable value chain.

How did Edisson, a farmer who grew up in a rural Colombian town start Cultivando Futuro and, together with his team, end up winning the grand prize of the 2017 TFF Challenge?

He shared his story with TFF, which you can read below. To learn more about what Cultivando Futuro has been up to since the 2017 TFF Global Summit in Amsterdam and how you can help them to grow, jump to the end of the story.

If the work that Edisson and the Cultivando Futuro team are doing resonate with you, you can get in touch with them at agro@cultivandofuturo.com.

My Story

by Edisson Aguilar

The origins of my family are in the countryside of Colombia. My parents worked for a long time managing farms, doing tasks such as milking livestock, gardening, and feeding all the animals that were on the farm.

When I was young, they moved to a town near Bogota called Tenjo, where I studied at the local school and helped them on the farm. I remember how much I used to enjoy feeding the dogs and playing with them in the fields until late at night.

Over time my father started producing food on the farm. He used to produce all different kinds of food, including strawberries and tomatoes. Every day after school I had to help him prepare the soil, plant crops under the hot sun, and help him with harvesting and packaging of the loaded boxes. There were times we even had to get up early before school so we could complete the harvest before midday. This hard job was our’s — and thousands of other Colombian farmers — everyday routine.

I worked with my dad for about 8 or 9 years. During that time I learned a lot: from how to milk cows to obtaining a certification in exportation of organic products. While developing these skills, I learned how to work with my community, creating relationships that last for years.

Agriculture was what gave us the sustenance to get ahead. My dad waking up every day at 3:00 in the morning to sell his vegetables was what made it possible to pay for my first semesters of study at university, and from there, start my professional career.

Becoming a Developer

Since I was young I have been fascinated by technology. When I graduated from high school I was awarded a partial scholarship to attend the Universidad Sergio Arboleda in Bogota to study Systems Engineering. In university, I learned how to code and developed problem solving skills, but I felt that my studies didn’t give me all the tools needed for the real world.

Through some research I realized that there were new technologies that were far more efficient, powerful and easy to learn as compared to what I was learning in university. Entrepreneurship taught me to be autodidact, and after 6 months of watching tutorials on Youtube and reading a lot of blog posts, I finished a mobile application for farmers so they could calculate a fair price for their produce based on the initial investment that they made.


It was at this time that Darío and Carlos, the two other co-founders of Cultivando Futuro, visited my family farm in Tenjo. They came to conduct customer interviews with farmers, and they left with their new CTO.

They came to conduct customer interviews with farmers, and they left with their new CTO.

Shortly afterwards I began to create the Cultivando Futuro platform. I made strategic decisions on which technology, language, and framework to use, and constantly tested the system with farmers to ensure the usability of the platform.

When I started working on Cultivando Futuro, I was challenged to solve a problem that affected farmers like me: how can we provide farmers the information they need to make smart planting, harvesting and selling decisions? Our team realized that the best way to collect the data needed to help farmers make these decisions was by creating a platform in which farmers could directly sell their produce to wholesale buyers. This system encourages farmers to input their crop data into our platform, because if they do so they are linked to a buyer that will purchase their produce at fair market prices.

After years of hard work the platform is in use by 200 farmers and 10 wholesale buyers with over 200 tons of weekly demand. In a few years time, I see my role becoming that of a data scientist, and I am incredibly passionate about how technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and blockchain can help farmers around the world feed 9+ billion people. I believe Cultivando Futuro will be a leader in bringing these technologies to producers around the world.

Cultivando Futuro Updates

This is Jared again! We wanted to share some quick updates on what Cultivando Futuro has been up to since they won the Grand Prize at the TFF Global Summit in May.

Since then, they have…

  • Doubled the number of farmers registered on their platform (100 to 200), with projections to exceed 5,000 farmers by the end of the year.
  • Created alliances with some major agribusiness events in Colombia, such as AgroExpo and ExpoCundinamarca.
  • Joined The Good Kitchen accelerator program in London: The Good Kitchen is a TFF Pipeline Partner, and TFF referred Cultivando Futuro to work with them.
  • Currently working with the National Farmers Union (UNA), demoing the Cultivando Futuro platform to large groups of farmers and farmer associations all over Colombia.
  • Improved the effectivity in the platform’s dashboards, showing processed metrics to measure Cultivando Futuro’s social impact and easily detect trading opportunities between the farmers and the buyers.

Call to Action

The global TFF community has an incredible potential to transform the food and agriculture industry through innovation. If you are reading this it means that you are part of an amazing group of people that could help Cultivando Futuro transform the livelihoods of tens of thousands of farmers around the world. Here are several ways in which they could use your help.

  1. Partnership leads on organizations that are performing development work in rural communities.
  2. Country representatives to begin exploring how to scale Cultivando Futuro around the world.
  3. Mentorship from experts in data science, analytics, blockchain, AI, and machine learning.
  4. Support from an AgTech accelerator / investment group.

Remember, If the work that Edisson and the Cultivando Futuro team are doing resonate with you, you can get in touch with them at agro@cultivandofuturo.com.

Lets spread this story, and together create a more food secure world!