Italian agritech firm Farm4Trade sets sights on Indian livestock market

This Italian company believes in technology as a ‘means to make food production fairer and more sustainable’. It pursues food safety and human wellness through better animal welfare, by applying innovative technologies to data analysis in order to improve transparency, encourage more sustainable production practices, improve productivity and help save resources along the livestock supply chain. To be precise, Farm4Trade develops Computer Vision solutions based on Artificial Intelligence and digital productivity tools for the zootechnical industry. Its goal is to improve animal health, animal welfare and food traceability across the full livestock value chain.

Speaking to Bizz Buzz exclusively, Jean-Claude Morel, Director of International Business Development & Sales, Farm4Trade SRL, explains why the Italian company is now actively and aggressively scouting for an Indian partner to kick off its operations and eventually expand base in India. He also explains how they are taking a lesson or two from their Namibian experience and replicate them in India

From the name of the company, one can make out that yours is a company that operates in agriculture sector and works for the farmers, farming community, animal husbandry sector. What exactly do you do?

We specialize in enabling traceability & improving productivity across the full livestock value chain. We support our customers in all the various moments of the life of their livestock. We develop, design and offer an all-in-one platform and tool to elevate customers’ livestock farming productivity. Technologies for the management of the entire livestock value chain.

What is the mission with which the company was floated?

Our mission is to improve confidence in food quality and livestock production efficiency, by becoming the data reference company for industries, governments and international organizations through long term crowdsourcing data collection systems. And our purpose is to design, develop and market innovative digital services based on Artificial Intelligence with high technological value in the agri-food sector, focussing on the Livestock sector.

We sincerely believe that the zootechnical industry must take a leap from fragmented activities to an integrated system for data collection, analysis and sharing, to monitor and innovate multiple aspects along the supply chain.

Farm4Trade being an Italy-based company, are you looking at the European markets? Or you have other plans as well?

We started from Italy. That’s where we are headquartered in. From there we cover the European market. Gradually we moved to Namibia, from where we cater to the African sub-continent. We are now actively looking at the Indian and Bangladesh markets. We may not look at Bangladesh market immediately, because of the current situations there. However, India is our prime and long-term focus. India is an agro-based economy, agriculture, animal husbandry play crucial role in the economy. Besides, I have been going there for years together in different capacities and I can say with a degree of confidence that I know the market and country well. I am particularly looking at West Bengal. We are actively scouting for Indian partners from technology, particularly AI and from amongst companies who are engaged in food sector with the entire supply chain. We are very appreciative of the large talent pool, and vastness of the matured market, there. Our experience in Africa can be very important for India, and it can help the Indian farmers to grow.

What are the product suites/services/solutions you currently offer from your stable?

At present, we offer the following:

Farm management app: Livestock management and record keeping tool to keep track all information.

Feed formula app: Valuable tool that aids in creating safe, well balanced and cost eff­ective rations.

Business intelligence app: Integrated dashboard capable of automatically processing all suite data, generating statistics and reports useful for all users.

Snap animal app: AI system for contactless animal identification. It allows to identify animals with smartphone camera and promptly access all the animal information on phone.

ReaDOP - Animal tattoo scanning system: An innovative AI system that can automatically read tattoo codes on pigs using advanced Neural Networks and deep learning techniques.

ADAL - Meat inspection: The first automated image acquisition and analysis system based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) capable of objectively indentifying and quantifying the lesions of slaughtered animals in real time.

How or in what way, your solutions help your customers?

Our solutions will help our customers to innovate and will support them on:

Traceability: We will build information systems that make animal data recording easy and accessible to anybody. We will create and make accessible a record for every animal that is either observed, farmed or simply kept by any human being. Information ranging from genetic data to genealogy, production, feeding, health issues, medical treatments, movements and behaviour will all be accessible and available to be analysed and exploited. Anybody wanting to record or access data on any animal, he/she has authority on, will recognize us as the world's most respected and competent company.

Sustainability: Farm4Trade develops advanced technological solutions dedicated to the sustainable development of the livestock sector with production process optimization exploiting data and automating manual processes; Better food quality through the decrease in the use of antibiotics and unnecessary medical treatments, as well as better animal welfare; Limiting the environmental impact by promoting zero-impact technological solutions; Optimization of disposal operation reducing production waste.

Productivity: Our solutions will streamline operations and help you to increase productivity. We believe in technology as a mean to make food production fairer and more sustainable.

We pursue food safety and human wellness through better animal welfare, by applying innovative technologies to data analysis in order to improve transparency, encourage more sustainable production practices, improve productivity and help save resources along the livestock supply chain. Farm4trade wants to connect all the players in the supply chain and lay the foundations for a real control over the traceability of food products.

What about your R&D or lab facilities?

While advancing Al technology for food traceability, Farm4Trade and collaborators labs develop solutions that leverage technologies, such as artificial intelligence and Computer Vision, to identify individual animals and analyze characteristics, with a focus on animal welfare. Farm4Trade along with strategic collaborators in industry, academic research, development help bring F4T Lab ideas from concept to reality.