Kharif soybean advisory project-2023: Agribazaar's initiative elevates soybean cultivation and farmer welfare
Abstract
In recent years, the yield of soybean crops in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan has been steadily decreasing. This decline is attributed to various factors including sudden climate change, heavy infestations of pests like girdle beetle and pod borer, irregular rainfall patterns, and lack of good planting materials. Additionally, farmers often lack awareness of modern cultivation practices and do not receive adequate guidance and advisory services for their crop-related queries. These issues collectively contribute to the degradation of soybean crop quality, leading to lower market prices for farmers. Consequently, many farmers have started shifting from soybean to other crops like maize and pulses, which may result in a significant decrease in the national soybean production. Physically reaching to each and every farmer of our country and addressing them is a bigger challenge, but through digital platforms it is more convenient to reach out to each and every farmer of our country and convey them relevant information. To address these challenges, a digital drive was initiated by Agribazaar in early Kharif-2023 in Guna, Madhya Pradesh, focusing primarily on soybean cultivation - “Kharif Soybean Advisory Project”. The project also extended its support to other Kharif crops such as maize, paddy, and green gram, utilizing the comprehensive features of the Agribazaar mobile application. The focus of this case study is to provide a digital platform designed to empower farmers by offering a comprehensive suite of tools and services. Agribazaar provides features such as crop calendars, market rates, input stores, and a crop doctor service to assist farmers in managing their crops effectively and enhancing their productivity.
Full Text
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Introduction
This project came into action when the production status of soybean in major producing states is declining and downfall in soybean acreage for Madhya Pradesh has been observed in the field. This Project mainly focused on giving appropriate recommendations, advisories and all the possible guidance to the farmer with the help of a digital platform which can help them in increasing their yield of the crop. We mainly focus on encouraging the farmers to cultivate soybean by following our good agricultural practices and crop advisory, which will provide them with all the updated technologies, practices of agriculture in their familiar languages like Hindi. All efforts were made to prove the effectiveness of our Agribazaar mobile application and its different features like Crop Doctor, Good Agricultural Practices, My farm, Crop Calendar, Fertilizer calculator, Mandi Bhaav, Input store, etc. Farmers are able to communicate about their crop related queries anytime and anywhere with our crop doctor, they are able to monitor their field and crop through their phones only, they are getting all the instructions and reminders regarding different agronomical practices and precautions regarding different insects-pests and disease attack through our crop calendar and notification center prior to their implication in the field. This project will help in providing all the recent developments and information to the farmers digitally, this will also help in their crop and disease monitoring from their phones which leads them towards smart agriculture. This drive will also be helpful to improve the quality of their produce which basically leads to better market rates. This Project was started during the early Kharif season and the farmers are with us on this journey till the end of the season and harvesting of the crop. At the end of the season some farmers who are on this journey with us, they found an increase in their produce with better qualities as compared to the previous seasons. Farmers feedback videos were made at the end of the project during the harvesting of the crop with their views, opinions and suggestions regarding this project. Through these features, farmers could communicate their queries anytime, monitor their fields using their phones, and receive timely notifications about important agronomic practices and pest-disease control measures. The project aimed to deliver the latest agricultural information and techniques digitally, improving crop quality, production, leading farmers towards smart agriculture and stopping the farmers from moving to other crops. The intended audience for this case study includes Agricultural technology companies and startups, Agricultural extension services and advisory bodies, Government agencies involved in agriculture, Farmers and farmer cooperatives and Agricultural researchers and educators.
Materials and Methods
Agribazaar Mobile Application
Objectives of study
• Physically reaching out to each and every farmer of the country is near to impossible, but tackling this challenge with technology is much more convenient. This case study focuses on total digital solutions for agriculture problems of farmers and reaching out to more farmers even with less physical intervention. • To conduct a total digital drive for making an impact over the Soybean farmers in increasing their production from previous year and educating them with modern technological tools and practices. • Telephonic conversation with all the farmers(141), along with sending notifications to convince them to onboard the agribazaar mobile app for their betterment. • Explaining and Advising farmers to use different features like GAP, crop doctor, crop calendar, my farm, crop health, moisture content of the field, etc. These features will help farmers in proper monitoring and management of their crop so that they can get better results. • Explaining the importance of the Crop Doctor feature to farmers, encouraging them to share/upload their crop related queries through the crop doctor feature and resolving them within 24 hrs. • Conducting Kisaan Sangosthis related to different Kharif crops for farmers and giving them all the updated information about recent agricultural developments. • Taking day to day updates of the farmers over the call and encouraging them to join the Kisaan Sangosthi organized on the Google meet. • Updating day to day details of all the activities, issues, resolutions, feedback, and process in the main log sheet with farmer names.
Following 100% digital solutions to achieve our goals, we aim below with this project • Fight the year on year decreasing Soybean acreage due to disease and climatic challenges faced by farmers. • With this, we will get Validation for our methodologies (GAP and Crop Calendars). • We are aiming to prove that reaching to every farmer of the country and solving their agriculture related problems is much more convenient and feasible through digital infrastructure as compared to physical methodology. • We will also do CCE at these farms and buy their produce if possible.
• At the end we are looking forward to testimony from these farmers on how happy they were with our services and actual user feedback on our service delivery. • Use notification center for giving alerts, take feedback over phone to understand whether farmers were able to understand and do as advised in the notification. We resolved this issue by frequent field visits, meeting farmers on their field, organizing online sangosthis, and educating them about the use of our app. This helped us in making better connections with farmers, analyzing and solving their crop related issues and making them aware about the future of digital infrastructure. This Phygital advisory project helped us to attract more farmers towards precision farming.
Resolving real time Crop Doctor Queries, Crop Calendar Advisory and management of crop and soil health helped the farmer to get more accurate information towards implementation of precise farming practices and expand their reach to a much broader horizon of agriculture
During the Middle of the season it was observed that the number of crop doctor queries increased with great significance. Due to the regular interaction with the farmers over the call, the average number of queries received per day is 11.68, which shows that farmers are seeking out for help and we are there to help. The major queries are related to disease and pest attack, nutrient management and suggestions regarding flowering and fruiting agents. Farmers were also interacting with us with the help of our customer care number which mainly involved crop related enquiries. Farmer's were happy and satisfied by the advisory issued to them regarding their queries. Some input stores, also connected and want to do a farmers meet with us for the farmers of nearby villages. The pictorial representation below, clearly shows the difference in Crop Doctor queries at different times of the season.
Significance of Phygital model of farmer engagement used in this Soybean crop Advisory Project
Traditionally surveys in Agriculture are meant to be physical exercise, this limits the scope of work and is poorly scalable. Also, physical methodologies used for similar case studies have higher chances of man-made errors, but digital infrastructure helps us in marginalizing these errors. We tried to overcome this limitations of physical methodology by adopting the phygital model. The project successfully demonstrated the potential of digital agriculture solutions in improving soybean yield and quality. By providing timely and accurate information, advisories, and tools through our platform, farmers were better equipped to manage their crops, leading to improved cultivation and farm income. This initiative serves as a model for leveraging technology to enhance agricultural productivity and farmer livelihoods. Their enthusiasm and eagerness to learn will help us to drive some more projects like this in the future. Engaged farmers were happy to see an increase in the yield of their crop only by following our GAPs and advisories. Our Crop calendar feature won't let them miss any of the agricultural activity in the field. Our crop doctor feature was there to help them and resolve any crop related query within 24 hours. Interaction with the farmers, their valuable feedback about this drive, their suggestions and requests, everything was recorded on the video. The farmers who on boarded with us on this journey from the starting, were beneficiaries of the project and how we as an agritech organization helped in modernizing their traditional agricultural practices. We strongly believe that precision and sustainable farming can be implemented easily with the Phygital model connecting farmers to other stakeholders of the Agri value chain. The success of this project was proof of concept of the phygital advisory model. The aim of the Soybean Crop Advisory Project was to implement precision farming techniques in the most natural way possible and this was delivered successfully.
Conclusion
The "Kharif Soybean Advisory Project" by Agribazaar effectively utilized digital tools to address the declining soybean yields in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. By leveraging the Agribazaar mobile app, the project provided farmers with crucial support through features like Crop Doctor, Crop Calendar, and Good Agricultural Practices (GAP). This digital approach significantly improved soybean yields and produce quality, demonstrating the power of technology in modern agriculture.
Farmers engaged with the app reported enhanced crop management and better market prices due to improved produce quality. The phygital model, combining physical outreach with digital solutions, proved successful in educating farmers and addressing their challenges. Positive feedback from participants and the observed increase in yields validate the effectiveness of this approach. Overall, the project underscores the potential of digital platforms to transform agricultural practices, offering a scalable model for improving productivity and farmer livelihoods. This success sets a benchmark for future digital agriculture initiatives aimed at advancing farming practices and sustainability.
References
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