Technological interventions key to transform Indian agriculture

He has one-and-a-half-decades of experience in the agribusiness sector in Asia and Africa, serving as an Advisor to various central and provincial governments (in Asia and Africa) in policy formulation and programme management across agriculture, dairy and food processing sectors. He has also served as a consultant to the World Bank Group for their flagship agro-logistics and dairy sector programs. Currently, as the Partner and Business Director at Wazir Advisors, a premier management consulting firm focused on agribusiness, retail, consumer goods, textiles and apparel and skill development sectors, Ritwik Bahuguna, leads the agribusiness (agriculture, dairy & food processing) vertical, providing strategic and operational advisory and implementation assistance to private sector businesses and non-government organizations, and policy advocacy services to governments. As Founder of Roots Foundation, he has worked with more than 15 lakhs farmers pan-India in technology transfer and market linkage programmes. Speaking to

Bizz Buzz exclusively, Bahuguna, shares his take and thoughts on how technology can be made increasingly relevant and how technological interventions can effectively transform Indian agriculture sector.

India's agriculture sector suffers from several paradoxes. While the sector provides employment to nearly half of the country's workforce, it has the least contribution to India's gross value added. India is one of the largest producers of various food grains in the world, yet the per capita calorie intake in both urban and rural areas is less than the average calorie requirements. Furthermore, food grains are rotting in warehouses. Thus, there is an obvious disconnect between the demand and supply centres, which can be bridged by harnessing technology. Today, the adoption and use of technology throughout the agriculture supply chain is crucial

Almost all sectors of the economy are now leveraging technology to stay afloat and stay competitive, especially post pandemic. Is it the case with the agriculture sector as well?

True that as the world is grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing restrictions on scope of physical economic activities, technology are being leveraged to make various ends meet. However, while both manufacturing and services sectors are fast adapting to technology and reaping its benefits, the story of the agriculture sector is slightly different.

Why do you say that and when it comes to agriculture, which is the gap that can be bridged most effectively using technology?

India's agriculture sector suffers from several paradoxes. While the sector provides employment to nearly half of the country's workforce, it has the least contribution to India's gross value added. India is one of the largest producers of various food grains in the world, yet the per capita calorie intake in both urban and rural areas is less than the average calorie requirements. Furthermore, food grains are rotting in warehouses. Thus, there is an obvious disconnect between the demand and supply centres, which can be bridged by harnessing technology. Today, the adoption and use of technology throughout the agriculture supply chain is crucial.

So, broadly, which are the targets that need to be met through technology interventions?

There are three broad targets – I call them the 3Ps – productivity, profitability, and predictability- that need to be achieved through technological intervention. Admittedly, although there has been a slight increase in food grain production over the last 2–3 years, the decadal data exhibits a cyclical trend with occasional troughs of poor harvest. Moreover, an increase in production may result in improving the stock of food grains, but not necessarily generate higher income for the farmer. Farm issues can be addressed by enhancing productivity, profitability, and predictability.

Let's go one by one. What role should technology play in increasing productivity?

High production may not always imply efficiency in farming methods, which is often measured by the productivity. Incidentally, accordingly to a report by NITI Aayog, while India is the second largest producer of rice (after China), the yield per hectare (kg/hectare) is much lower than that in rest of the subcontinent.

Technology can play a multi-layer role in productivity enhancement in the following ways:

l R&D on developing sustainable, better yielding seeds and agri-inputs

l Information dissemination to farmers

l Real-time handholding in adoption

Both the government and the private sector are shouldering the responsibility of R&D by adequately leveraging technology. Mobile and TV-based technology platforms aimed at information dissemination are also mushrooming in various parts of the country. However, technology is yet to play a key role in providing adoption assistance to farmers, which is the most crucial link in the chain.

What about profitability?

Farmers can enhance profitability by either reducing cost or by fetching higher prices for their produce, or both. Often, farmers sell their output at lower-than-average prices without identifying quality grades of products. Some new age agriculture ventures, while limited to metro and tier-1 markets, grade farm-procured produce and sell to end customers/retailers. One of the reasons that most farmers in India grow food grains is due to the certainty of procurement by the government, which ensures that the farmer has a buyer. Thus, there is a need to bridge the gap between the farmers and the markets, and to provide product and market information to the farmers through technology. Techniques such as direct seeded rice (DSR), which save cultivation costs, also benefit farmers. KVKs and other stakeholders should review the package of practices of all major crops with respect to use of water and agri-inputs. Finally, the use technology for monitoring and reducing food loss and wastage at farmgate may also help in improving economics for farmers.

You mentioned predictability as another key aspect. So what role should technology play on this front?

Yes, the third important aspect is predictability – about both farm production and crop prices. Price discovery is important for farmers for better price realization. The new Law on the Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Ordinance, 2020, which was eventually repelled, was supposed to allow farmers to sell outside the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees (APMCs) mandis. While this would have broken the perceived monopoly of the APMC mandis, it was likely that the farmers might still rely on mandis for price discovery. In such a scenario and otherwise, it is important to provide technology-based platforms, on the lines of the existing e-Nam portal (which served a national unified market for APMC mandis) for farmers to access information on markets and prices.

Although there are existing initiatives for both market and weather-related information, there is a need to scale up their use. One of the first few companies to foray in this domain was ITC, which started the IT (V-sat linkages) based e-Choupal network, consisting of village level real time information dissemination on price discovery. There are several other digital platforms that provide a wide spectrum of services to farmers, such as Eruvaka, MyRML, AgroStar, AgriAPP and CropIn.

What has been the experience of the agrotech start-ups? Do you think they have failed to take off, that way? If so, what needs to be done?

Despite the large potential user-base, most of the agriculture technology startups and initiatives have not been able to scale up due to the heterogeneous nature and vast size and spread of agriculture sector in India. Moreover, the number of farmers using smartphones is very less and 3G/4G mobile data penetration is not adequate. Therefore, there is a need for a great degree of customization (including using voice and SMS), which makes scaling up both costly and difficult. VCs and PEs are now focussing on this space and many start-ups are raising funds for expansion. However, for start-ups to grow and become 'acceptable' by various farming communities, their focus must go beyond data collection for commercial use to solving farmers' actual problems. Lastly, government's role in creating a robust 3G/4G network will be a basic pre-requisite for this ecosystem to flourish beyond India's major metro cities.