Schoolgirl from Azerbaijan creates marketplace for family farmers

In many countries, it is precisely small family farms that provide residents with natural, high-quality agricultural products.

However, despite the high demand for environmentally friendly products, thousands of producers continue to face one and the same problem, namely the lack of access to a broad sales market. Amid rapid digitalization, large agricultural holdings actively use modern technologies, marketing and online platforms to promote their products, while small farms often remain virtually invisible to potential buyers.

This is because many of them do not have the financial means for advertising, do not have their own online stores and are forced to sell their products exclusively at local markets or to regular customers, which significantly limits the development of their business.

One way or another, this problem is also relevant for Azerbaijan. In many regions of the country, family farms produce natural honey, dairy products, meat, eggs, vegetables and other high-quality goods, but they cannot always find a sufficient number of buyers. As a result, some farmers face financial difficulties despite the high quality of their products. At the same time, residents of large cities also often do not know where they can purchase goods directly from producers, overpaying intermediaries or having no access to local farm products at all.

It was precisely this problem that 14-year-old schoolgirl Leyla Heydarova decided to try to change, creating the social internet project KendMart — a platform connecting small family farms of Azerbaijan with potential buyers.

Despite her young age, the creator of the project set herself a quite specific task, wishing to help small farms solve one of the most widespread problems of modern rural business, in the form of the absence of effective channels for finding customers and promoting their own products.

It is worth noting that the idea of creating the platform came to Leyla after taking part in the international Climate Science Olympiad. Having successfully reached the semifinal of the competition and been awarded a gold medal, she said it was precisely the preparation for the olympiad that made her study more deeply the issues of climate change, sustainable development and the role of agriculture in preserving the environment.

However, the concept of the project took its final shape only after trips around various regions of Azerbaijan. During her travels together with her parents, Leyla met a large number of local farmers and was able to see their work with her own eyes.

The main goal of KendMart is to create a direct link between producers and consumers without complicated intermediary schemes. According to the developer's plan, this will not only increase farmers' incomes, but also make natural products more accessible to the country's residents.

Today the platform is already operating and open to users. To work with the service, one needs to complete a simple registration. After that, the user can choose one of two types of account — "farmer" or "buyer."

If a farmer registers, he is given the opportunity to create a page for his farm on his own. On the platform, one can post information about products, indicate a contact telephone number and address, as well as add a description of the goods offered to buyers.

Buyers, in turn, gain access to a general database of farms. On the main page of the site there is a catalog of producers indicating regions, a list of products and contact information. After registering, a user can browse offers, select the goods of interest, obtain the producer's contacts and get in touch with him directly. Thus, real farms from various districts of Azerbaijan are already represented on the platform today.

Residents of Lankaran offer buyers natural honey, farmers from the Imishli district sell eggs and cottage cheese, farms of the Saatly district sell poultry, and producers from the Sabirabad district offer meat products. The geography of the project is gradually expanding, and the number of participants continues to grow.

At present, 134 users are registered on the platform, and 19 farmers who post their products have already joined the project.

The creator of KendMart notes that small family farms often produce high-quality products, but lag significantly behind large enterprises in matters of advertising and promotion.

"Small farmers have practically no opportunity to invest money in advertising. Because of this, many people simply do not know about their existence. Our platform helps to tell a larger number of buyers about them and contributes to the development of their business," Leyla says.

At the same time, KendMart was conceived not only as a trading platform.

An important part of the project became the environmental component, since after taking part in the international climate olympiad Leyla began actively studying issues of sustainable development, rational consumption and the impact of agriculture on the environment. She decided to use the knowledge she gained in creating her own project.

In the schoolgirl's opinion, supporting local producers is directly connected with caring for the environment.

Small family farms often apply more traditional methods of farming, pay more attention to product quality and treat natural resources more carefully compared with large industrial production. That is precisely why supporting such farmers contributes to the development of sustainable agriculture.

The creator of the project hopes that users will perceive every purchase from a local producer not only as the acquisition of quality products, but also as a contribution to the development of rural areas and the preservation of the environment.

"I really want people to understand that by buying products from a local farmer, they are helping a specific family develop its farm and at the same time supporting a more sustainable model of food production," she notes.

Despite the fact that the project began operating quite recently, its author already has plans for the platform's further development.

In the future, Leyla intends to introduce a search for farmers by regions of Azerbaijan, expand the list of product categories, add more educational materials about sustainable agriculture and climate change, as well as develop a full-fledged mobile application that will make using the service even more convenient.

In her opinion, digital technologies are capable of significantly easing the lives of small producers and providing them with opportunities that previously were possessed primarily by large companies.

Thus, although the platform is still at the initial stage of its development, already today it is helping farmers from different regions of Azerbaijan find buyers directly, and consumers gain access to natural products without intermediaries.

And if the project continues to expand and attract new participants, KendMart could become both a useful digital service for the agricultural sector and an example of how initiatives by young people are capable of making a real contribution to solving socially significant tasks.

You can get acquainted with the platform, learn more about the farms represented and support local producers on the official website of KendMart.