Recently, Google has been trying to transform online shopping experience by making it easier for people to discover smaller brands on its shopping platform. According to Mad over Marketing, Mastercard is doing something similar with small farmers in the region.
According to eurostats, the majority of the farmers in Romania are small scale farmers. "74% of Romania's farm population had less than 2 hectares of agricultural land, equating to about 2.9 million farms." "These smallest holdings covered 13% of the country's UAA. At the other end of the scale, agricultural holdings with 50 hectares or more of UAA accounted for over half (53%) of the country's agricultural area. However, they represented only 0.5% of the number of Romanian farms."
A phenomenon in Romania is that most farmers find it difficult to get their produce to the market because of middlemen and thus rely on selling their product on road sides. While trading on the roadside is an alternative instead of relying on middlemen, the problem associated with this approach is low revenue owing to poor patronage. In short, the roadside doesn't have enough customers who stop by.
Mastercard is solving this problem by literally putting these farmers on the map. How? Through Mastercard's partnership with Waze - a popular GPS navigation app in Romania. The campaign, which aims at promoting equal access to markets and financial independence among local farmers and small businesses, puts roadside vendors on the map with pins uniquely designed for each of these vendors.
The ripple effect of the partnership is the increased visibility of local farmers on the popular platform. This will give local farmers the power to influence the price of the goods they sell instead of the middlemen dictating price because they now have the ability to attract customers.
In addition to increasing the demand for the products of these local farmers, Mastercard is making transactions easier and faster for them by providing digital payments for them.
Romania in focus
GDP: $250.077 billion compared to Kenya's $95.503 in 2019
Population: 19,366,221 compared to Kenya's 52,573,973 in 2019
GDP per capita: $12,913 compared to Kenya's $1,816 in 2019
