Launched in 2015, MiiMOSA is the 1st participatory financing platform exclusively dedicated to agriculture and food. Beyond offering an alternative to traditional finance, MiiMOSA is a place for exchange, sharing and solidarity between a community of contributors and project holders in these sectors. Interview with Florian Breton, founder and enthusiastic CEO for whom "small streams make big rivers".
The agricultural financing market has almost doubled in less than 20 years. This highly capital-intensive sector is facing numerous changes that need to be financed in ways other than the so-called"traditional" financing, which has not really changed for a century.
To support the triple transition of the sector - economic, social and environmental - project leaders must learn to diversify their sources of funding: subsidies, banks and MiiMOSA. This is even more true for new entrants, more than half of whom are now outside the family framework, who encounter many difficulties in obtaining financing. Indeed, the financing of the renewal of generations having been thought on a model of transmission-installation between parents and children (from state subsidies - DJA - to bank financing), it is no longer adapted for profiles not coming from the agricultural world which do not have a history and a guarantee to submit to the banks.
Thus, the players complement each other perfectly and bring virtues that the others do not have. Concerning MiiMOSA, our assets are simplicity (100% online), speed (between 5 and 10 days for a credit up to 2m€), flexibility (without deposit or guarantee) and communication allowing the acquisition of a clientele. In view of the issues behind the agricultural transition, the future lies in diversification and therefore in the biodiversity of financing ;) !
By the end of 2021, in 6 years, MiiMOSA will have supported nearly 5,000 projects for €70m of funding, of which €30m in this year alone. Beyond our financing tools, the donation with counterparty allowing to finance projects up to €150,000 and the loan up to €2m, our innovation is to recreate the link between the citizens (who finance) and the farmers but also to accelerate the eco-environmental transformation of agriculture. We are approaching 400,000 users, including more than 20,000 new ones per month. More than a platform, MiiMOSA must become a movement, a dynamic ecosystem around the agricultural and food sectors. According to the recent studies we have carried out among our users, MiiMOSA gives confidence to the project leaders and makes proud the citizens who support our theme.
Clearly, not 3 indicators but only 1, diversification: to create autonomy, independence, economic and agronomic resilience. Tomorrow's farm will produce to feed, but not only: it will store carbon, produce renewable energy and biodiversity. Thus, by combining tradition and modernity, environment and productivity, agronomy and technology, our farms will be more diversified, competitive and attractive.
In the coming years, every day, through their consumption, women and men will make the choice of a world in which they want to live, of a society, of a justice, of a fairer and more just trade. The climate agenda and the food revolution will transform the sector and the profession for the better. You are right to be involved in this sector, which is at the heart of the challenges of this century and of which you will be the heroes. A word of advice: learn from the past, your independence from all your partners will be the key to your success, your destiny is your own.
Rather than a personality, a brand: Patagonia. Their development, since the 1980s, has been truly incredible. Initially a visionary project, Patagonia has grown from a brand activist to a global collective movement united behind a mission: we're in business to save our home planet. Powerful!
