A CONCEPTUAL I-GRICULTURE BUSINESS MODEL: STRENGTHENING FOOD SECURITY AND NURTURING B40 AGRO-PRENEURS

Abstract

The importance of agriculture is often overlooked even though it is in fact among the areas that have a vital role in ensuring the availability of food supply and raw materials to resource-based industries. Lack of support and exposure to this field can cause the agriculture sector to be dim, and this can result in a lack of food production and raw materials in our country, which are basic necessities needed in ensuring the livelihood of the community. Furthermore, there are B40 families who struggle to get adequate food supplies, and this can happen due to their low income, under-employment or unemployment factors. This challenge can be overcome by encouraging B40s to venture into agriculture, utilizing underutilized land, and supporting them to start businesses as agropreneurs. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual business model including a digital platform and applications as an effort to facilitate and support B40s, farmers, and the public as agropreneurs. By supporting them, two of the goals of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which can be achieved are SDG 2: Zero Hunger (end hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture) and SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth (promoting productive work and decent work for all). This paper adapted the Design Thinking (DT) methodology which helps in understanding the key problems and challenges of various customer segments (CS) before viable solutions are formulated and made, which includes conducting literature reviews, benchmarking, surveys on CS, low-fidelity prototyping, and testing potential solutions. Furthermore, an initial conceptual business model (BM) was developed using several business modeling tools, which are Environmental Map (EM), Business Model Canvas (BMC), Value Proposition Design Canvas (VPC), and Strategy Canvas (SC) which were then tested and validated by various CS. Thus, a validated conceptual BM including a low-fidelity prototype, as the possible solution is offered in this paper.