BongoAgro: a mobile application for reducing postharvest losses in fisheries

Abstract

As part of the fisheries industry in Bangladesh, its huge losses in the postharvest stage amounting to 25–30% annually are a significant economic and nutritional issue, as it occurs at an estimated economic cost of about 151 million every year. Lack of good cold storage, defective transportation, undesirable handling, and unavailability of market intelligence in real time forms the main causes of these losses. To overcome this, they created a mobile and IoT-integrated mobile application specifically to focus on Bangladeshi fish farmers called BongoAgro. By their platform, users can get real-time market prices, information about the local weather forecast, monitor the cold storage by the Internet of Things, get expert advice, and be informed offline, all arranged in a friendly Brahman language interface. Pilot testing has shown that it has cut down spoilage by 15-20% and increased farmer income by 12-18% which means that there is a lot of potential in enhancing supply chain efficiency and sustainability. This thesis introduces the formulation, the design, and the execution of BongoAgro, its relative strengths relative to competing solutions, and the potential to expand the potentially indicated expansion of digital interventions to improve food safety and rural livelihoods.