The tokenization of agriculture is upon us, and it’s harnessing the power of the blockchain and NFTs to change the game in Southern Africa.
-Bhubesi
Introduction
Mount Krios is a utility-based NFT project sporting some very fine artwork launching on the Cardano blockchain on June 17th. If you don’t know what any of that means, or if you’d like to find out what makes this project so exciting, you’re in the right place. We’ll be looking at the basics of NFTs, blockchains, real and digital assets, and we’ll also be taking a closer look at what this team from South Africa’s Eastern Cape is striving to do with their unique combination of blockchain technology and real-world agriculture.
NFTs — what are NFTs?
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are digital assets that are coded onto blockchains like Cardano, Ethereum, Solana and others. They are made up of code including unique identifiers, which means that each and every NFT is by definition one of a kind. Each NFT has a unique fingerprint, known as the Policy ID. Although an image can be copied, it can never be passed off as the original because on the blockchain as the Policy ID is imbedded in the NFT and visible to anyone who looks at it. NFTs can include images, sound, video, documents, links and files of all descriptions — they’re truly multimedia and the only limit here is one’s imagination. Another important aspect of an NFT is ownership, including, but not limited to intellectual property and copyright: not only are they unique, but NFTs offer perhaps the best and most secure form of ownership available to mankind to date — especially when they are resident on public blockchains like Cardano. Ownership is easily verifiable and non-negotiable — if the NFT is in your wallet, it is indisputably yours and there is no other like it. It can’t be stolen, claimed or removed.
Today, NFTs are being used around the world by artists and businesses alike, as mediums in their own right, as products — or more accurately, in some cases, the packaging for products — and also to solve a wide range of 21st century problems like identification, education, product tracking and authentication, certification, licensing, and even in real-estate. NFTs are already everywhere, and they look set to become a far larger part of all our lives in the years to come. Beyond that, investing in NFTs can also be spectacularly profitable, with certain blue-chip projects already boasting sales in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars and celebrities lining up to purchase them to use as PFPs (profile pictures) on their social media accounts.
Bridging the gap — real and digital worlds
One of the more interesting things NFTs are being used for today is to forge connections between the real and the digital worlds. Examples to date include identity documents and college diplomas in Ethiopia, pork products in China, and fresh vegetables in North America. More broadly, companies like BMW are using the blockchain to manage their international supply chains too, making them more transparent, adaptable, and easier to calibrate or adjust in these uncertain times. At a certain level this makes sense, given that blockchain technology is at its core a distributed ledger system, allowing for the more efficient capture, storage and transfer of information or data. It is nonetheless fascinating to watch the number of new applications that are currently emerging from this space and to contemplate the growing value these provide to governments, companies and individual people all around the world.
Enter Mount Krios, which is making use of this vast potential to bridge the gap between real-world agriculture and the digital sphere. They’ve harnessed the power of the blockchain — and NFTs in particular — to build a digital community around a farming project in the rugged hinterland of South Africa’s beautiful Eastern Cape. The project is centred on the Boer Goat, a uniquely South African breed. It draws a connection between a collection of Boer-Goat-inspired digital artworks, and a living, breathing herd of the real-life animals, something that has never been done before. In so doing, they are forming and mobilizing an international digital community and pioneering an entirely new agricultural business model to help drive their mission to improve food security and resilience in rural Southern African communities.
The Mission
This represents, on the one hand, the first step towards the tokenization of agriculture and animal husbandry, which is an exciting development in and of itself. It also offers environmentally disconnected urban digerati the opportunity to be part of the process of farming again, to be reconnected to the soil and to the blood, sweat and tears that goes into producing that most essential of resources: food. The Mount Krios community will be involved in every step of project development, from planning and design to management decisions, aided by high technology in the form of streaming, automated weighing machines and the opportunity to visit the farm themselves and take a hands-on role in daily activities there.
If this mission-driven project is seeking to connect real-world farming with blockchain and NFT technology, the question of their farming expertise and ability to deliver real-world results is also a critical one. The involvement of their farming partner, who will take a leading role in advising and managing their real-world herd, is an integral aspect of the project’s future success, and they are therefore fortunate indeed to have partnered with one of South Africa’s premier Boer Goat breeder, Jac Jordaan.
Jac hails from a long line of farmers and goat breeders in the Eastern Cape, and his family history is intertwined with the history of the Boer Goat breed too, and his great grandfather was one of the pioneers of the breed. They started their stud line in the early 1900s and have bred several champions in recent years. Jac is an accredited international Boer Goat judge, as was his father. His passion is to develop better animals that are more easily adaptable and can be farmed profitably in any country. He is involved with farming projects across Africa and is an established member of the South African farming fraternity too.
Jac is also involved in training and education programs; in the past 12 months they have trained 240 new goat farmers in 4 different provinces in South Africa. His vision is to help these farmers to improve their current stock and to make their farming operations more profitable. The aim of these projects is to form an umbrella network of Boer Goat farmers who all benefit from the value chain with the objective of enhancing genetics on the one hand, and farming practices on the other in order to maximise production and enhance food security and resilience across the region.
The project’s vision, then, is an ambitious one. Their minimum viable product entails the creation of a breeding herd, and their business model and profitability relies on this herd’s successful breeding, growth, and the revenues generated by sales of their prime stock and genetics — aided of course by Jac’s expert knowledge, experience and selection skills. The revenues generated by the above will contribute towards their digital community pool too and will be used to reward holders of their Boer Goat NFTs through regular giveaways and competitions (more on this in their Litepaper, which you can find here).
The mission extends well beyond this, though. The team at Mount Krios are also planning to expand upon Jac’s existing work in the training of goat herdsmen and the provision of Boer Goat genetics in Southern Africa as part of their philanthropic initiatives. The hardiness and adaptability of the Boer Goat breed makes it ideal for farming across much of the Southern African land area, which in turn means that this breed, if farmed and cared for correctly, can vastly improve the food security and resilience of vulnerable rural populations. In this time of global food insecurity, this aspect of the project takes on heightened significance and represents just one more way in which this young South African team is trying to make a positive difference in the world.
Boer Goat Art
If all that wasn’t enough for you, the art is also quite special. In a recent video on her work, artist Kia describes the process of capturing key Boer Goat breed characteristics in her pieces, as well as the benefits of spending time working with real live specimens. Her collection is made up of 150 hand-drawn traits or attributes spread across four classes or rarities, each with their own themes and properties. The Gold Horn Studs are the rarest and therefore most desirable, followed by the Silver Horns and then the Bronze. The bulk of the collection is made up by the flock animals, which alone boast over 150 unique traits inspired by historical clothing and accessories. A tattoo artist by training, Kia’s work draws on her extensive experience in tattoo design and digital art, making for a rich and diverse collection of pieces set apart by her own personal style.
Minting is LIVE
If you’d like to find out more about this project, you can find their website here. They’ve built a vibrant community on Twitter too, and if you’d like to get more involved with the community the best place to start is on their Discord, where you can also find out more about their NFT mint on which opens to the public on June 17th [whitelist mint to be followed immediately by the public sale]. Jac’s website, where you can learn some more about the Boer Goat breed and his farming operations, can be found here. If you’re new to Cardano, this is the best place to start. Also make sure to check out the Mount Krios YouTube channel to keep up to date with all the amazing content they’re putting out around the farm, the artwork, and their team!