Ideas for Future : Data driven agriculture cultivation and water management

© Shailesh Vickram Singh

2 Ideas for the future

Talk delivered at “Acumen Fund – Ideas for the future Word”

Shailesh Vickram Singh

twitter : @svickramblog : fringenotes.in


Idea 1: Near Term


Crop Cultivation Forecasting Models


Increasing population and climate change will create more food price shocks in time to come. However this food price shocks instead of impacting income of marginal farmer in positive way, will further destabilize them. This will create serious challenges for Govt., Policy makers!


Agriculture commodity price scenario

• Tahir Square / Arab spring started with rising cost of bread

• In 1999 and 2013, Delhi state govt lost state election because of rising vegetable prices

• Despite all intentions and strategy, Governments have failed to predict or manage agriculture commodity price shocks as govt present strategy on price control is more of a knee jerk reaction than any strategy


Cultivators : Forever disadvantaged

Despite rising cost of agriculture commodities, farmers are not able to reap benefits as their behavior is very similar to small retail investor in share market

• Sell before price rise ~ Crop prices generally rise after 2/3 months of post harvest, while farmers generally sell crop immediately post harvest without any knowledge of demand supply situation

• Wrong crop selection : use past data ( past high prices) to grow crop thus resulting in glut or shortage in a very cyclical fashion


Mis Placed Focus : Post Harvest vs Crop Selection

• Unfortunately rising price is always attributed to post harvest phenomenon i.e. lack of storage / supply chain / stocking and weather (storage of food grain doesn’t work as cost of new food supply is lower than cost of stored food supply on account of better road network and even weather cycles. This phenomenon removes any economic incentive for storage of food supply)

• While the problem is more related to crop selection and related to pre cultivation i.e more of supply related


Opportunity

Data i.Crop pattern and cultivation data available (Remote Sensing)

ii.Better weather data prediction tools

iii.Advance knowledge on outbreak of disease as well as data on better yielding crops

iv.Irrigation pattern data

v.Availability of price movements as well as crop performance data across region and globally

Delivery

i.Cheaper smart phones

ii.Coverage of 3G and upcoming 4G networks


Impact

119 million Cultivators in India alone


Secret sauce

• Data, data and data with ability to weave pattern from existing data points to predict future price behavior based on supply / production data

• Mobile focus

• Vernacular product to cater to rural population


Idea 2 : Future Shot


Water world : 2025


Country of Billons


With vast network of rivers


which has reduced to


Further Challenges to water

• Domestic RO plants – waste 20 liter of potable water to produce one liter of drinking water – 700 liters drained every day per house hold ~ 1 million household in Delhi with RO plant, waste 700 million liter

• Declining ground water – borewells banned in most part of country and every year water table declining sharply


Future or Nightmare crawling towards us!!!


Opportunity

Next war is going to be fought for water


Opportunity / Road ahead

New paradigm needed to think about water solutions. Existing solutions are creating more stress ( RO plants, filtration plants, bacteria led solutions etc) than creating viable options. Hence it needs policy intervention as well as private innovation to bring bigger impact


Thank You

Shailesh Vickram Singh t ~ @svickram

w ~ fringenotes.in

Ideas for Future : Data driven agriculture cultivation and water management

Small Business & Entrepreneurship

Transcript of Ideas for Future : Data driven agriculture cultivation and water management