Farmhopper, a digital middle layer between environmentally-conscious customers and local farmers

The platform will be launched in Hungary first, but the consortium plans international expansion in the future. Partners include OTP Bank, E-Group and Swedish research centre KTH.

Brussels, 8 July 2019 – Hungarian farmers’ markets are nice, but only a small fraction of consumers regularly visit and shop in them, partly because they are not easy to find, have limited availability or customers are unsure about the origin and naturalness of the products.

But this is set to change: Farmhopper, an EIT Digital supported innovation activity, will allow environmentally-conscious consumers to get easy access to fresh groceries, while at the same time enabling farmers to build their reputation, showcase and sell their products to a wider audience and receive adequate payment.

“In Hungary there are many local markets where you can buy fresh food; however, they don’t scale, because customers need to know their exact location, and they don’t have a catalogue of what’s on sale. Many of them are also open only one day or a few days a week, which is also part of the problem,” the project manager of the activity leader E-Group, Ágnes Bányai, says.   

Farmhopper, which will be accessible both as a website and a mobile application, will overcome all these hurdles by building a software platform which takes care of all the processes related to the agricultural value chain (onboarding, creating and maintaining marketplaces, order management, payments and billing).

Acting as a digital middle layer, the platform will provide customers with all the necessary logistical information and also contain a catalogue of the products on sale.

Consumers will be able to select their favourite groceries and place an order, using a secure credit card payment solution provided by OTP Bank, one of the largest independent financial services providers in Central and Eastern Europe.

The initiative started in September 2018, as an “early bird” activity, with an initial focus on the Hungarian market involving E-Groupas activity leader and OTP Bank and KTH as partners.