India's top agri-technology companies welcome government's Farm Bills

India’s top agriculture technology companies have welcomed the Farm Bills introduced by the government. The firms said the three bills were aimed at bringing major reforms in the agricultural structure that has existed in the country for decades. They said that that the intention was to accelerate growth in the agri sector through private sector investment in building infrastructure and supply chains for farm produce in national and global markets.

The bills are aimed at helping smallholder farmers get a better price for their produce and invest in technology to improve their farm productivity. These bills are also expected to create opportunities for the young firms in areas ranging from supply chain, warehousing to logistics and e-commerce. These firms use cutting edge technologies including, cloud, big data, artificial intelligence and blockchain to bring traceability in the supply chain, reduce food wastage and help farmers increase crop yields.

“Through these (Bills) Indian farmers are set to accelerate their incomes and get their farms working at the fullest lucrative potential,” said Krishna Kumar, founder and CEO of CropIn, an agritech company. “The Bills make it easier for farmers to fetch the right price for their produce, free them from the middlemen costs, and also expand their market reach beyond mandis and government-controlled markets,” said Kumar, whose firm is playing a key role in the agriculture sector.

Using cutting-edge technology like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and remote sensing, CropIn creates an interconnected network of all the stakeholders. This enables customers like banks, government, farming companies and retailers to analyse and interpret data to derive real-time actionable insights on standing crops. Bengaluru-based CropIn has digitised over 6.1 million acres of farmland and enhanced the lives of nearly 2.1 million farmers, while gathering data on 388 crops and 9,400 crop varieties in over 52 countries.

 

Three agriculture related bills were introduced by the government amid protests from the opposition. These include  - The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill-2020, The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement On Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill 2020,  and The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill—2020.

The bills allow farmers to get into contract farming with agribusiness firms and large retail producers on pre-agreed prices for their produce. They also protect farmers from any fraudulent agreements.

New age companies including Farmpal are removing middlemen and connecting farmers directly to businesses. Pune-based Farmpal, which uses a digital technology-driven integrated supply chain, has established a connection with over 1000 farmers, of which 400 farmers actively supply their crops to them. They  provide a selling price that is at a 15-30 per cent premium over what the farmers receive in mandis, where they sell to middlemen according to the prevailing market price. Puneet Sethi, co-founder, Farmpal said the new bills would help farmers increase their incomes, especially the smaller farmers with marginal land holdings that constitute over 75 per cent of India’s farmers. “Farmers today have no alternative to the traditional mandis; to an extent they can sell to state licensed agencies, but that process is very cumbersome given the regulatory process and paperwork involved,” said Sethi.

The earlier system centered around the mandis, no-doubt facilitated MSP (minimum support price) to farmers, but limited their options to trade outside of the same.

“The newly passed bills are reformatory in nature and break the monopoly of mandis, allowing private buyers to build trade dialogue and engage directly with farmers,” said Vivek Rajkumar, founder and CEO of Aibono Smart Farming, a platform connecting premium and perishable vegetables from kisan-to-kitchen. “This allows the farmer the freedom to pick and choose the most lucrative channel of sale after making an informed decision,” Rajkumar said.

The farm reform bills would also play a role in removing the many entry-level barriers faced by agri-tech companies which can now focus on core strengths of 'tech and science of farming' to assist agriculture as a whole. With the help of cloud based analytics, Aibono has been handholding farmers with less than 2 acres of land to know what crop to sow based on the land’s soil strength and other variables. With real time seeds and yield management data, it can determine the potential acreage of a particular crop and provide advice to farmers.

"Farm bills are helpful to farmers and consumers if their implementation and monitoring goes in the correct direction with a proper review mechanism,” said Pradeep PS, founder and CEO of Kerala-based farm-to-fork online marketplace Farmers Fresh Zone. “The (bills) actually remove all the restrictions imposed on the farmers to trade their produce. It also allows corporates to explore new opportunities,” Pradeep said.

Ananda Verma, CEO and co-founder of agritech firm Fasal, finds the bill on contract farming a step in the right direction. This is because a lot of marginal farmers, who are not able to adopt practices and technology, form the majority in India. “We see, through contract farming, companies will group farmers together and make a collective or farmer producer organisation (FPO) and make advanced technologies available to them," said Verma. Bengaluru-based Fasal uses sensors and other Internet of Things (IoT) devices to capture relevant data from the farms continuously. The geographical location and algorithms based on historical data aid in delivering notifications to the farmer in local languages.

 

“The (bills) are a progressive step towards increasing the farmer’s income as well as bringing flexibility to the food supply chain in the country,” said Anupama Prashar, Assistant Professor at Management Development Institute (MDI) Gurgaon. "Farmers (would be able to connect) directly to the retailers, exporters, and other agriculture supply chain partners. They will benefit from investments made by private players in the agriculture value chains,” Prashar said.

According to Tauseef Khan, CEO and co-founder of Indore-based agritech firm Gramophone, these bills will facilitate intra-state trade. This would also help to balance demand-supply and minimize the volatility of the prices in the long run. 

“This (bills) will empower farmers and give price assurance to farmers even before sowing of crops. It will reduce the risk of market unpredictability from the farmer to the sponsor,” said Khan. “Due to the prior price determination, farmers will be shielded from the rise and fall of market prices.”

Gramophone has built an intelligent farming platform - using data to guide a farmer in selecting the right agricultural inputs for maximum yield.