Deep-Tier Supply-Chain Financing for Agribusiness in Emerging Markets
Case study overview
Adecore is developing an integrated agricultural-finance programme that connects alternative credit scoring, deep-tier supply-chain finance, controlled payments and fractional investment.
- Alternative credit scoring designed around agricultural realities
- Farmer and farm data consolidated with informed consent
- Deep-tier finance extended beyond direct suppliers
- Funding connected to verified production and commercial relationships
- Controlled payments directed towards approved agricultural purposes
- Harvest proceeds distributed through transparent payment workflows
- Regulated fractional investment can broaden domestic participation
- Tokenisation can administer approved investment rights
- Risk controls can include insurance, diversification and staged funding
- Ghanaian fractional agricultural investment pilot under development
Traditional credit models rarely reflect how farming actually works
Many farmers do not have conventional payslips, audited accounts, titled property or long histories with formal financial institutions. This can make a productive and experienced farmer appear uncreditworthy when assessed using traditional lending criteria.
Agricultural income is also seasonal. Capital is required before planting, while revenue may not be received until months later. Repayment schedules designed for salaried workers or conventional businesses can therefore be poorly matched to farming cash flows.
Farmers also carry risks that extend beyond their direct control:
- Drought, flooding and irregular rainfall
- Pests, disease and crop failure
- Input-price increases
- Changes in market prices
- Buyer or offtaker failure
- Post-harvest losses
- Inadequate storage and transport
- Delayed payments from buyers
- Foreign-exchange exposure for imported inputs
- Limited or unaffordable crop insurance
Without suitable formal finance, farmers may rely on personal savings, relatives, community arrangements, traders or informal money lenders. These channels can be valuable sources of community support, but they may provide insufficient capital, impose expensive terms or require farmers to sell crops early at unfavourable prices.
Traditional lenders face legitimate difficulties as well. Serving remote customers is expensive, loan amounts may be small, agricultural records are fragmented and a single climate event can affect many borrowers simultaneously.
The result is a cycle in which limited data restricts finance, limited finance restricts productivity, and limited productivity reinforces the perception that farmers are too risky to fund.
Better data, stronger commercial relationships and responsible capital
Adecore is developing a programme that evaluates farmers within the reality of agricultural production rather than relying exclusively on conventional collateral and credit history.
The programme brings together four connected capabilities:
Alternative credit scoring
Using consented agricultural, transactional and production data to develop a more complete assessment of capacity and creditworthiness.
Deep-tier supply-chain finance
Connecting smaller farmers and suppliers with finance through verified relationships with aggregators, processors, exporters and anchor buyers.
Controlled payment infrastructure
Managing how capital is disbursed, used, collected and distributed across participating farmers, suppliers, financiers and investors.
Fractional agricultural investment
Enabling eligible investors to participate in approved farming opportunities through appropriately structured debt, revenue-sharing, profit-sharing or other regulated instruments.
Adecore’s role is to orchestrate the institutional and technology environment required to make these capabilities work together.
This can include:
- Programme and operating-model design
- Farmer and value-chain discovery
- Financial ecosystem development
- Specialist partner and platform selection
- Legal and regulatory coordination
- Credit-scoring and data integration
- Payment and collection infrastructure
- Investor and participant onboarding
- Controlled pilot implementation
- Programme monitoring and continuing improvement
The objective is not to replace banks, agricultural institutions or local expertise. It is to provide a trusted infrastructure through which they can serve credible farmers with better information and stronger controls.
Building a trusted farmer profile
The programme begins by establishing a permissioned digital profile for each participating farmer or agricultural enterprise.
Depending on availability and consent, the profile may bring together:
- Verified identity and contact information
- Farm location and cultivated area
- Land-use or farming rights
- Crops, production cycles and expected yields
- Historical production and sales
- Input purchases
- Buyer and offtake relationships
- Cooperative or aggregator participation
- Previous loan and repayment activity
- Mobile-money and business transactions
- Warehouse and delivery records
- Insurance coverage
- Weather, satellite and agronomic information
Farmers must remain informed about which data is collected, how it is used and who is permitted to access it.
Developing an alternative credit score
Adecore plans to integrate a new credit-scoring model through specialist partner technology.
Rather than asking only whether a farmer owns conventional collateral, the model can assess whether the proposed farming activity demonstrates a credible capacity to produce, sell and repay.
The assessment may consider:
- Farming and production experience
- Historical yield performance
- Crop suitability and seasonality
- Verified buyer demand
- Expected production costs
- Forecast revenue and cash flow
- Previous delivery performance
- Repayment and payment behaviour
- Climate and geographic exposure
- Crop diversification
- Insurance and risk protection
- Participation in a trusted agricultural network
The score would support—not replace—responsible human decision-making. Explainability, data accuracy, bias testing, farmer consent and a process for correcting or challenging information must be embedded into the model.
A farmer with limited formal credit history should not be treated as though they have demonstrated poor repayment behaviour. In many cases, they have simply not previously been visible to the formal financial system.
Connecting finance with the agricultural value chain
Traditional supply-chain finance often reaches only the largest supplier directly connected to an anchor enterprise.
Deep-tier supply-chain finance can extend this opportunity to farmers, cooperatives, input providers and smaller businesses deeper within the same commercial network.
A participating processor, exporter, retailer or other anchor buyer can provide evidence of demand. Verified purchase orders, offtake agreements, invoices or production commitments can then help financiers assess the commercial opportunity supporting the farmer’s request.
The model can connect:
- The anchor buyer’s demand
- The aggregator or cooperative
- Participating farmers
- Input and service providers
- Financial institutions or approved funders
- Payment and settlement infrastructure
This makes the financing decision less dependent on the farmer’s standalone balance sheet and more connected to authenticated commercial activity.
The Asian Development Bank describes deep-tier supply-chain finance as a mechanism capable of expanding finance to smaller enterprises while strengthening transparency, resilience and financial stability across complex supply chains. Asian Development Bank.
Next stages of program
Adecore is actively looking for participants of the program:
- Creating transparent repayment and payout flows
- Opening responsible domestic investment participation
- Using tokenisation where it creates genuine value
- Protecting farmers and funders from agricultural risk
- and more.
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How intelligence
becomes impact
Understand Reality
We look beyond the immediate brief to understand the wider system, its evidence, stakeholders, constraints, dependencies and human consequences. We begin with reality, not a predetermined answer.
Make Evidence Visible
We distinguish what is known, inferred, assumed and still uncertain. This gives decision-makers the clarity to act with confidence grounded in evidence, not confidence alone.
Define the Better Future
We establish the outcome worth pursuing and the impact it must create. Human, economic, institutional and environmental consequences shape our work from the beginning.
Structure Responsibility
We align governance, capital, commercial logic, decision rights, risk and ownership. Ambition becomes executable when responsibility is clear and commitments can be honoured.
Integrate Capability
We assemble advisory, technology, research, delivery and strategic partners around the outcome. The client experiences one accountable institution, not a collection of disconnected services.
Execute with Accountability
We turn decisions into operating capability, building systems, deploying infrastructure and delivering programmes while keeping progress, risk, evidence and responsibility visible.
Measure what Matters
We measure more than activity or commercial return. We examine whether people benefit, institutions become stronger, economies gain capability and resources are stewarded responsibly.
Leave Capability Behind
We transfer the knowledge, ownership, systems and confidence required for the work to endure. Our responsibility is to leave every institution more capable than we found it.