The credit card and payment manager giant Mastercard has launched a new service called the Farm Pass, with claims that this tool will benefit farmers and sellers to secure more fair revenues for their produce.
As noted in Mastercard’s press release, citing Indian farmers as an example, many farmers are unable to retain sufficient margins from their crops because most of it has to go through some form of middleman that is taking most of the cut of the profits, and because many farmers do not have that much cash on hand or credit available to purchase fertilizers and pesticides to increase their yields.
This is where Mastercard steps in to alleviate some of these problems.
Farm Pass connects farmers directly with buyers, empowering them to negotiate the best price for their produce. Farmers can also access quality farming products like fertilizers and review farming information such as weather forecasts and pest control advice through the platform, as well as get paid and pay digitally.
A digital record of their transactions means they have the validated financial history they need to apply for loans to finance and grow their businesses. And buyers can source their products more efficiently.
Farm Pass is part of Mastercard’s Community Pass digital platform, which connects people in the most remote and underserved communities to service providers, including banks, schools, healthcare providers, governments and international development organizations.
With no consistent identification or credentials, onboarding and servicing people in the paper-only world of digitally excluded individuals is manual, inefficient and expensive.
Mastercard explained
Incomes are stifled for hundreds of millions of smallholder farmers living in digitally excluded communities. We’ve found many of these farmers are price takers and not price makers. We’re digitizing value chains to be more transparent, empowering the farmers.
Not only do we have the ability to change the world and to have a positive impact on the lives of people around the globe. We have almost a moral imperative to do so.
Tara Nathan, the Mastercard executive who develops digital solutions for social impact, said
The big emphasis here of course is that Mastercard continues to reiterate the benefits of digitizing the agricultural space that is mostly manually logged with physical paperwork. As cited in a different post by SME.asia, Ari Sarker, president of the Asia Pacific division of Mastercard, reiterated the program’s benefits.
While technology has brought profound benefits to much of the world, digitally excluded people in remote communities, like most farmers, face unique challenges in breaking the cycle of poverty. Too often, smallholder farmers’ profits are at the mercy of forces outside their control, making them price takers rather than price makers.
The beauty of Farm Pass is that it works by addressing farmers’ most pressing needs: to get digital, get paid and get capital, giving them greater leverage in the agricultural value chain.
Importantly, Farm Pass isn’t an aid program or philanthropy—rather, it enables farmers to be properly compensated for their work by cutting out inefficiencies and middlemen, creating a commercially sustainable system for all involved.
He said
However, while the digitalization aspect is a key component, Mastercard’s Farm Pass can be operated offline as well.
SME wrote: ‘Most importantly, the Farm Pass ecosystem works both online and offline, enabled by internet agnostic technology and a network of agents who meet farmers in person and connect them to the platform on their behalf. This way, farmers do not need to own a smartphone, pay for data, or be digitally literate in order to participate in the program.’
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
While Mastercard is certainly whitewashing this to sound wonderful, we know what they are about. They have been on the cutting edge of introducing biometrics on a global scale, and are very much working to implement social credit scores and carbon calculators.
SEE: MasterCard Releases A Carbon Footprint Calculator For Banks
All this is doing is giving Mastercard a record of what people are producing, selling, exporting, earning, and buying. This will no doubt, in my mind, eventually link-up to these social credit scores and CBDCs.
Ultimately, it is one more layer that is cultimating to the mark of the beast.
[16] And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: [17] And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. [18] Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. Revelation 13:16-18
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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I had a nightmare!
I was dreaming that it was the time of Jacob’s trouble, the catching up has happened, and all the employees at Wendy’s are left on the earth and it’s like we’re now in a safe area with video games and recreation, we’re putting our names on some NES looking games because we’re playing video games and all sorts of other recreation.
The recreation room was in like a safety place and we were putting our names down to play games and whatnot to keep tabs and records on us, it was all a set-up for the mark of the beast.
When I find out what’s actually going on, I lick my fingers and wipe off my name off the list with several other names also sharing that video game.
Now, I hear a party going on, the music sounds like creepy guitar party music and then I’m led into a room and I see a friend of mine wearing a black leather surgical mask and the room looks creepy almost medieval and then he says to me “you’re gonna have to get marked,” and I run out and down the road.
The last thing I saw as I was running was a tall, Rocky Mountain.
…and then I woke up super uneasy. Brothers and sisters, the catching up is getting close!
Jacob, what are your thoughts and what saith the scriptures?
Genesis 40:8 KJV
hope this helps you
It helps some, magnolia. I’m perceiving that the catching up is close and also the days are so evil.
That dream was frightening, and I think, I was just getting a taste, so to speak, what the world is going to go through when the Antichrist first appears. The days are so evil, it’s the days of Noah and the days of Lot.
I have been a vile, wicked sinner for most of my life, and I finally considered coming to repentance and doing so and I called out to God to be saved on November 28th, 2022 and I cried as I listened to Bryan Denlinger’s salvation message, and I’m glad I cried because my heart wasn’t hardened.
The Lord still has a lot of work to do on me, magnolia.