We do study hard in streams like Engineering, Medical, Commerce or Management, after the sleepless nights we achieve our certificate of Degree or Diploma and then strive for getting an awesome job in a coveted MNC hoping to get life settled ( which never happens..ha.ha).
What we strive is followed by many semiskilled population in almost every developing country. They dream of getting some kind of supporting job to improve living standards. In result we have rural to urban migration has crowded cities and created the scenes around us like below. Some of us don’t get desired success and also ends up in depression. In this race we are not even able to give time to our offspring, this is scenario at all levels, to specify, below poverty line, at middle class.
Keeping the emotional things apart, observe these situational pictures below, many of use observe these in our surroundings. Majority lower middle class and below poverty line population is migrating to urban as they are not able to get the proper remuneration in rural area
Agriculture is the largest source of employment and it’s evident that, for many of the farmers, farming is not coming out to be a profitable venture, which is pushing many of the farmers and farm dependent labors to migrate to urban zone. According to P. Sainath (Eminent journalist from The Hindu) on an average every day 2035 farmers are moving away from the farming profession.
We at Input Agri Tech started working on this issue. We analyzed the farm economics and behaviors. Observed the issues at various stages of farming processes. Farmers are facing labor issues throughout the year due to labor habits, labors getting support from employment guarantee schemes or government running the popular schemes of distributing food grains, many laborers have lost the appetite for work. The result is that farmers has to pay more for less work. When farmers go for procurement of the seeds they pay more than MRP for a seeds which they want to sow in the fields. Number of times they end up is procuring the fake seeds. Black-marketing for fertilizers makes situation worst, for many of farmers banks don’t disburse the Agri loans on the time, they have to turn to local money lenders and pay more on interests.
It is very common that farmers do not have access to best practices required to exercise for crop under cultivation, they do not have the proper storage facilities of the produced crop and worst financial punch they get from the brokers when they are made to sell crop at lower prices.
We performed a lot of Analysis, brainstorming and identified areas where we can provide the solution to this situation, there are few simple solutions to it and in some cases it needs big policy decisions. Although we wanted to focus on that we can achieve at our end. Observed that in current scenario the infrastructure of the ICT can be of a great help to Agriculture arena.
According to IMEI by June 2014, rural zone had 85 million internet users in rural India of which 25 million are using actively once in a week. There is no question on that majority of rural population are farmers and they are not untouched by this revolution in communication technologies. We have observed many of the folks uploading images on Facebook and which examples us the usage of the internet connectivity at rural world.
At input Agri Tech we configured a platform called Agrowbook.com, its Marketplace can curb farming input cost ranging from 5% to 50 %. When we discussed this with Krishi Kendra Owners, they got overwhelmed with channel that they are getting to improve on revenue and reduce the inventories. Unlike the Retail mobile shop owners taking hit due to online mobile sales Flipkart, Amezon and Snapdeal, Krishi Kendra owners were happy to recognize the opportunity they are getting to list products online and take advantage of the e-commerce and were happy to offer the discounted prices on agri Inputs. Krishi Kendra contributes at least 1 million employment through around 300,000 registered shops pan India serving almost 95 million farmers families in India.
(Screen Grab of Agrowbook.com Marketplaceand Videossections.)
Farmers getting 5% to 50% discounts would contribute on positives of farmers balance sheet which just an area where Agrowbook.com is poised to contribute.
In Agriculture Ecosystem, there are other Situations which Input Agri Technologies have modeled to address through Agrowbook.com.
We have established Marketplace, forums, Events, Best Practices and informative videos.
The new information exchanges on Agrowbook.com will catalyze the agriculture information flow from agronomist to a famer, feedbacks from farmer to agronomist. Agribusiness companies to farmers and vice and versa, universities to students etc,
We will strive to make the agriculture a profitable venture for all those who are involved in the ecosystem to avert the concentration of the people who altogether puts the pressure and fight for resources.
We are determined and excited to make a difference in agriculture space to help ourselves,
Review and Join us by providing advice, ideas, investments, critic’s views and by wishing a best of Luck.
Thanks and Love to All.
Subhash M Lode (09666 55 6197)
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Agrowbook/752573984817031?fref=ts