"Overall, we added 15,803 new farmers this quarter to our customer base. Our growth target for this year is 82,000 new customers, and to date we’ve added 53,487 new farmers. Our farm irrigation products saw strong year-on-year growth, while our farm finance and agronomy advice services’ results were lower than targeted. This quarter, our farm finance business was hampered by unexpected delays in receiving regulatory approvals for overseas capital. Thus, we did not have sufficient loan funds to meet demand. Our agronomy work had difficulty finding experienced and trained agronomy field staff, which has led to understaffing at a time of planned expansion in advisory services. Our rural recruitment efforts have ramped up and our People Operations team is improving onboarding processes to ensure new extension officers can be trained well and quickly deployed. Current Farm Services Offered: + Quality Seeds and Precision Planting: This quarter is typically not the rice planting season so we anticipated low adoption of our rice seed cleaning practices. Only 624 farmers adopted during the quarter. + Soil Health Testing and Nutrient Management Services: As farmers prepare for the upcoming monsoon rice growing season, they are investing in soil health testing. After a slower than expected start, sales have picked up this quarter, with 1,886 customers buying our newly launched soil testing service, and a YTD total of 4,059 sales—37 percent of our annual target. As expected, the sales closing rates for the soil tests were high among farmers who had already used one of our other services; with a 40 percent closing rate among our pest/disease on-call diagnostic service users and 34 percent among farmers who had adopted two of our agronomy practices. We continue to improve the service delivery and sales skills of field extension officers, but are one quarter behind on targets. We project soil test sales will reach 6,600 farmers by year end, which is 60 percent of our original first year target. This quarter, 4,486 farmers adopted our free recommended crop fertilizer practices. + Crop Protection Services: Our crop protection service offers an on-call field visit service to rice farmers year round. This quarter, we experienced a spike in requests, with our field agronomists responding to 3,194 farmers’ calls. Farmers request help to diagnose a pest or disease problem in their fields and receive a recommended treatment protocol. There was an outbreak of thrip insect in the Ayeyarwady Delta this quarter. Fortunately, the crop losses in such cases are preventable if caught early. We’ve found these on-call services generate strong trust among farmers and help lay the groundwork for introducing other agronomy practices..."