With the vision of increasing per-acre value for farmers and improving their livelihoods, CropIn was born. Providing sustainable farm solutions for food, feed and fibre and ensuring Farm-to-Fork traceability across the agriculture supply chain are the mainstay principles that drive the company. In an Exclusive interview with The Organic Magazine, Krishna Kumar, Founder & CEO, elucidates on the challenges of digitising Indian agriculture and why he believes that AI and IoT is not just the future but the present reality of global agriculture.
What was the vision and inspiration behind setting up CropIn Technology?
It was observed that Agri-businesses used primitive technological methods in their fields and were below par in making effective and well-informed data-driven decisions. The usage of modern technology in farming was minimal in the majority of these businesses. There were information gaps at different levels of the agri-ecosystem, leading to information asymmetry throughout the chain. Also, with consumers keen to know about the origin of their food and how it was produced and processed, there was a need for transparency along the end-to-end Agribusiness supply chain.
CropIn Technology Solutions was established as a platform that addresses the varied requirements of farmers and helps them improve their agricultural productivity for a better income. In a few years, CropIn has expanded to providing Agribusinesses with a comprehensive digital solution that manages a large and diverse set of farmers locally and/or globally on a single platform and ensures predictability, visibility and control of their supply chain, which is currently very broken and distributed when it comes to smallholder aggregation models.
As Indian agriculture is still very unfamiliar with digitisation, how difficult was it in getting into this field and what were the challenges faced in the initial years?
We observed some initial challenges in bringing the tech to Indian agriculture.
The first is adaptability, specifically in India, because a majority of Agri enterprises who have already been working with conventional practices view any drastic change towards digitisation with scepticism. Also, the common misconception that the use of the application is only to track them and evaluate their performance only adds to the challenge and distracts them from the bigger picture.
The second is mobility and literacy. Though mobile communication and broadband connectivity are at its best yet, there are limitations in its penetration of broadband in rural areas, and there is much to improve with regards to rural literacy. Technology keeps on changing and we as a company need to be on the top of it. To stay updated with the latest advancement in technology is a time-sensitive and cost-intensive process.
These challenges subsequently affect AgTech companies’ reach of expansion in working directly with the farmers. CropIn has been proactively addressing the above issues, which has enabled us to tackle the barriers better than ever before.
Your insights on how AI and IoT can help the Indian farmer? Is it the way forward?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) in agriculture is not just the future, but in fact, the present reality of global agriculture. AI technology has been a major potential booster in the world of agriculture. The impact of IoT in farming has brought in wonders and scaled up benchmarks for farmers in terms of food production and positively impacted their livelihoods.
AI-driven agriculture means smarter, data-driven decision making, richer yields, higher-quality production through a reliable, accurate and sustainable system that harnesses modern technology towards crafting a better tomorrow for agriculture.
AgTech driven by AI and IoT will also act as a knowledge repository for the farmer to be future-ready in terms of dealing with unseen vagaries and situational decision making. Smart agriculture brings in the aspect of traceability, which truly is a game-changer in maintaining consistency in quality assurance and providing credibility for the product and the producer as well.
What about the investment cost? Will the highly marginalised Indian farming community be able to afford it?
In terms of competitive pricing, CropIn understands that the farmers especially in developing countries where farming is a major occupation are not financially stable and cannot afford tech solutions and eye them with scepticism. In India, over 50% of the total workforce relies on agriculture for their livelihood. Owing to a large number of individual farmers, and over 80% of the total farmlands in India being smaller than 2 ha, it is next to impossible to digitise each individual, highly fragmented farm. Hence, CropIn largely works on a B2B model, catering to farming companies that employ farmers in large numbers.
Through this, CropIn has been able to effectively digitise over 6.1 million acres of farmland so far, impacting the lives of 2.1 million farmers across 52+ countries and able to identify 387 crops and 9,400+ crop varieties. This brings modern technology to marginalised communities as well, the ones who previously couldn’t afford such implementations in their farms.
CropIn targets Agribusinesses which in turn impact farmers’ livelihoods since they also are concerned about farmer well-being. This ensures competitive pricing is met while increasing farmer incomes, which is one of our main goals. This creates a win-win situation for all. Investment cost-wise, there is an initial configurational, training and installation cost that we levy on the client, post which the revenue is subscription-based and license-based in nature.
Your take on the future of farming. Is it going to be Organic, especially with countries like the USA and the EU ramping up legislation to boost the sector?
The Agri industry has witnessed a major change in terms of food trends. People and businesses are more concerned about how food is prepared and how crops are grown owing to their shift towards healthier food grown using organic fertilisers.
It is widely observed that the consumers now are extremely conscious of what they consume and take extra care in ensuring that the product was made organically. Definitely, organic farming will be the most practised approach to cultivation. Traceability will play a very key role as well. The future of farming looks bright, thanks to the advancement in the world of AgTech that we are seeing every day.
Will your tech solutions be equally beneficial to the Organic farmer as to a Conventional Farmer? How can technology help farmers recover from the impact of Covid-19?
CropIn’s tech solutions are crop and location agnostic, which makes them highly customisable, adaptable and scalable in nature. CropIn caters to all kinds of farmers and the solution can be adapted and implemented based on the client requirements. So the benefits are independent of whether the farmer is organic or conventional in approach.
Procuring manual workforce is one of the biggest challenges farmers are currently facing due to the pandemic crisis. Supply chain and logistics have been another challenge for the farmers. The movement of their produce has been majorly affected due to the prolonged lockdowns in many regions around the country.
Crop losses have been reported in various regions of the country owing to the unprecedented and untimely locust attacks coinciding with the pandemic. Farmers are facing difficulties with respect to the availability and accessibility of seeds, fertilisers and pesticides. Covid-19 has reduced production capacity for farm inputs and has led to an increase in prices, making resources inaccessible for farmers to plan for the next farming season.
Farmers have not been able to harvest the ‘bumper crops’ like cereals and oilseeds this season due to the pandemic. The crops have had to be abandoned in some cases. Long-chain supplies have been heavily affected by the prolonged lockdown scenario, disrupting logistics for transporting crucial and time-sensitive crops.
Access to credit becomes extremely vital for farm operations in difficult times like the current scenario. Technological interventions smoothen the process of agri lending for the BFSI sector and facilitate faster loan disbursals for farmers. This provides data parameters for the Financial Services Providers to determine and measure the agri-worthiness of a farm and farmer based on the historical performance of the farm and the farmer as well.
Implementation of digital technology onto the farmland is a major game-changer for farmers. Technology revolutionises agriculture for farmers through exponential improvements in results. Usage of Data Analytics for decision making will ensure there are minimal errors in judgement and the farm functions at its fullest potential with minimal risk impacts. AI/Machine Learning (ML) can assist in the reduction of operating costs while increasing yields during harvest.
The areas to focus on would be the implementation of digital technologies in the entire cycle of agricultural processes to enable traceability, increase overall efficiency and boost manpower productivity which can be capitalised post economic recovery.
The usage of farm machinery will be another area of focus in these times where finding a manual workforce is going to be a challenge. The other area of focus should be to embed technology in all aspects of the agricultural DNA, making the tech solutions adaptable, customisable and scalable to the needs of the user.
Through the digitisation of farms, CropIn has been able to provide efficiency in farm operations and visibility on the best practices used in growing that are aligned with the SDGs. By providing the best advisory, we are helping improve the quality of products and increase overall yield, thus improving the livelihood of farmers.
For an agrarian economy like India, this is a great boost in accelerating the growth of GDP. When there is a disruption in field force, through remote sensing, CropIn monitors farms and helps the user understand the effects at a regional level. Best parameters to understand them are by analysing acreage, health, stage and yield data, which CropIn’s solutions capture and provide a course of action based on the variations. Agri-tech solutions enable farmers with data-driven decision-making abilities. This ultimately impacts the market value of agri-products and enables scalability in terms of growth.
What are your future plans?
CropIn’s focus area for the near future is designing futuristic solutions that can easily integrate with Drones, Sensors and diving deeper into AI – ML technology. We plan to come up with more smart solutions involving these technologies and leverage the same to build a sustainable tomorrow.
CropIn is very excited about the newest technological brainchild, SmartFarm Plus that has been designed and developed by the team. We shall be bringing the upgrade to the market very soon.
Also Read: AI based BeCrop soil biology test to reach more farmers in the US
