Rural Missouri - June 2021 - 31

for every farmer there's a value in having a resource where
they can get all the information they need, where they
can look at the news of their interest without having to go
through everything else, " Randy says.
The other driver is the social interaction that has been
missing from the lives of rural people even before the
pandemic hit. " As much as anything there is a social good
to this, " Randy says. " Farmers are up against a lot now.
When you say climate change, farmers get concerned
sometimes because they see themselves as a target. So
they need to be part of those discussions. That's something we want to be part of and get the information in front
of farmers. "
He likens it to a coffee shop, " if you can imagine a coffee shop where there's a South African rancher, a potato
farmer from the Ukraine, a soybean producer from Brazil,
a rice farmer from China. That's the kind of coffee shop we
are trying to create. "
Obviously language is a challenge, but Randy says for
the most part the discussion has been in English. He says
online tools like Google Translate have helped bridge the
language barrier.
AgWiki is free now, but eventually a fee will be charged
based on the level of service users want. For example, in
time, educational courses will be added to the site. A user
might want to tap into those services, or just use the site
to stay in touch with like-minded individuals. In some
parts of the world where poverty is a serious barrier to
learning new skills, the company won't collect a fee.
AgWiki is raising funds to greatly expand its reach using
the StartEngine crowdfunding service to attract investors.
With 28 percent of the world's workers involved in agriculture, there's a massive opportunity for growth.
And that's a good thing considering the need to get
better at agriculture in order to feed a growing world and
nourish the estimated 700 million people who go to bed
hungry each night.
" There is deﬁnitly a need out there for it, " says John
Sr., who has traveled to 38 countries in his 40 years as an
ag publisher. " There's a real lack of education around the
world. Some guy that's growing sweet corn. Maybe he's
growing 5 bushels this year. With technology he may be
able to increase it to 10. Now what happens? All of a sudden a lot of the starvation that goes on around the world
may not happen again. "
Adds Randy: " If you produce ﬁve more bushels of some
crop and take it to the local market, there's ﬁve extra
bushels of food in your community and the world. At AgWiki we want to connect people with that same purpose of
helping feed each other. "

photos courtesy AgWiki

You can join the AgWiki community at www.agwiki.com
or ﬁnd out more about its investment opportunities at www.
startengine.com/agwiki.
Top: Msasa James, one of the thought leaders who help direct AgWiki's development, led this workshop in Tanzania where extension
ofﬁcers learned about vegetable and fruit processing along with how
to use AgWiki's resources to grow more food. Center: AgWiki CEO
Randy Krotz leads the discussion as the team prepares to launch the
online resource. Bottom: From left, John LaRose Sr., Randy Krotz and
John LaRose Jr. lead the AgWiki project.
JUNE 2021 | RURALMISSOURI.COOP

http://www.agwiki.com http://www.startengine.com/agwiki http://www.RURALMISSOURI.COOP

Rural Missouri - June 2021

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