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Company News

The alliance is supported by the global partner Bayer, and the local partners AMSA (Agroindustrias Unidas de México) and Yara

Founded in 2018 by Bayer, IFC and Netafim, the Better Life Farming (BLF) Alliance has been launched in Latin America starting with the opening of the first BLF Centre in Córdoba, Mexico in February 2022. The Alliance is supported by the global partner Bayer, and the local partners AMSA (Agroindustrias Unidas de México) and Yara. It brings together global as well as local private and public organisations to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and their communities in low- and middle-income countries. Assessment studies are underway for further expansion plans of BLF in Latin America, Africa and Asia in 2022 to help unlock full potential of smallholder farmers.

“The concept of Better Life Farming is to build partnership ecosystems that are able to address farmers needs by providing advanced agronomic solutions, good agricultural practices, on-farm training, market access to help farmers grow their farms into commercially viable and sustainable farming businesses, rather than just a means to thrive”, said Dr Lino Dias, Vice President of Smallholder Farming at Bayer’s Crop Science division.

The initiative seeks to facilitate agricultural capacity building in rural areas across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It acts as a last-mile delivery solution to provide smallholder farmers access to high-quality agricultural inputs, services, and training needed to enable local farmers’ capacity building and connection to the food value chain.

Today, BLF already reaches more than 600.000 smallholders in India, Bangladesh and Indonesia. The alliance has successfully operated more than 1.600 BLF Centres in 2021, thanks to the vast number of motivated local agri-entrepreneurs including many women, committed to making a difference in their communities.

The alliance is supported by the global

Supply Chain

Cargill’s ranking reflects the company’s leadership and innovation on animal welfare

Cargill has announced that it has received a Tier 2 ranking in the newly released Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare (BBFAW) report, the leading global measure of company performance on farm animal welfare.

This is the sixth year in a row that the annual BBFAW report ranked Cargill in Tier 2 out of six tiers total. Only 16 of the 150 global companies rated in BBFAW’s report are in Tiers 1 or 2, which BBFAW defines as reserved for companies that have made animal welfare integral to business strategy.

“We are proud of our continued high ranking in this year’s BBFAW report, as well as the work we’re doing every day to advance animal welfare within our operations, with our customers, along our supply chains and across the industry,” said Nick Wolfenden, Cargill’s global sustainable animal welfare director.

Animal welfare is a crucial issue for consumers, food manufacturers, protein producers, and farmers and ranchers worldwide. Cargill collaborates with numerous organisations to help advance animal welfare across all species in its business and incorporates these advances through continuous improvement efforts both internally and with supply chain partners.

Cargill’s ranking reflects the company’s leadership and innovation on animal welfare, as well as a data-driven approach to comprehensive reporting across its animal protein operations and supply chains worldwide.

Cargill’s ranking reflects the company’s leadership and

AgroPolicy, Live Stock

This herbal based formulation kills all stages of ticks in cattle and goat and safe to be used all stages of livestock

ICAR-Central Island Agricultural Research Institute, and Natural Agro Products Private Limited, Port Blair has signed a Memorandum of Understanding for licensing of Dweep tickure- a herbal based formulation for control of ticks in livestock, on March 11, 2022.

Dr E B Chakurkar, Director, ICAR-CIARI and Vijay Vishwasrao Patil, C/o Natural Agro Products Private Limited, Port Blair, South Andaman inked the MoU for their respective Institutes.

A team comprising Dr Jai Sunder, Dr T Sujatha, Dr D Bhattacharya, Dr E B Chakurkar and Dr A K De have developed oil based herbal topical formulation as acaricides for control of tick infestation in livestock. This herbal based formulation kills all stages of ticks in cattle and goat and safe to be used all stages of livestock including pregnant and lactating animals.

This herbal based formulation kills all stages

Interaction, Sustainability

UPL has received the More Integrity Award’s ‘yellow seal,’ valid for a further two years

UPL was first recognised with the award in 2020, receiving a ‘green seal’ valid for the duration of 2021. This year, UPL has received the More Integrity Award’s ‘yellow seal,’ valid for a further two years.

Rogerio Castro, CEO of UPL Brazil, said: “UPL is honoured to receive the More Integrity Seal, reflecting not just our immediate successes in sustainability, social responsibility, and ethics, but our long-term commitment to these ideals across our businesses. For us, sustainability is at the core of our work, it is reflected in the products we bring to market now, in the products we’re developing as we seek to ‘re-imagine sustainability,’ and in the way we do business with our customers, our distributors, and our partners in both the public and private sectors. We look forward to continuing to reflect and promote these ideals in Brazil and everywhere we work, raising the bar for agribusinesses around the world.”

The More Integrity Seal was instituted in 2018 to foster, recognise and reward integrity practices by agribusiness companies and cooperatives under the perspective of social responsibility, sustainability and ethics.

Recipients of the seal underwent a rigorous evaluation process by an esteemed panel of private and public sector members of the Seal Management Committee. The committee consisted of members from Alliance for Integrity, the Brazilian Stock Exchange (B3), National Confederation of Industries (CNI), Brazilian Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock (CNA), Ethos Institute of Business and Social Responsibility (ETHOS), Organisation of Brazilian Cooperatives (OCB), Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (MAPA), Brazilian Company of Agricultural Research (EMBRAPA Stock), and the Federal Inspector General Office (GCU).

UPL has received the More Integrity Award’s

Agrotech

The facility will have demonstration units for mushroom production, food processing & value-addition and poultry production

Dr Trilochan Mohapatra, Secretary (DARE) & Director General (ICAR) inaugurated the Technology Demonstration Facility at Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Khordha, Odisha on March 10, 2022. Ajaya Kumar Dash, Head, KVK, Khordha briefed about the new facility. The facility will have demonstration units for mushroom production, food processing & value-addition and poultry production. It will also be used for imparting the skill training to the farmers and farm women.

The DG was accompanied by Dr Joykrushna Jena, Deputy Director General (Fisheries Science); Dr BP Mohanty, ADG (Inland Fisheries), ICAR along with Dr SK Swain, Director, ICAR-CIFA, Bhubaneswar and other Senior Officials of ICAR-CIFA and KVK, Khordha.

While interacting with the farmers and farm women in the Exhibition organised at the KVK, Khordha, Dr Mohapatra urged the KVK for facilitating the Self-Help Groups to improve their marketing skills and organise them to form as collectives like Farmers’ Producers’ Organisations to scale-up their operations. Underlining the Government of India’s target of creating 10,000 FPOs by 2025, the Director General emphasised that the KVKs would play a key role in mobilising the farmers and providing technical support.

During his interaction with the Scientists and Staff Members of ICAR-CIFA, he urged for focusing on the outreach & effective communication of the scientific research to the stakeholders and reorienting the research priorities for bringing out innovations that can enhance the farmers’ income.

The facility will have demonstration units for

Dairy, Live Stock

The company is investing $5 million to expand its INFUSE by Cargill service and the centre will serve as a regional innovation hub, supporting dairy customers throughout the Middle East, Turkey and Africa

In a move to help dairy manufacturers better respond to evolving consumer demands, Cargill Turkey has opened a state-of-the-art technical application centre and a high-tech ingredient blending production plant in Bursa, Orhangazi. The company is investing $5 million to expand its INFUSE by Cargill service and the centre will serve as a regional innovation hub, supporting dairy customers throughout the Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META).

First introduced in Europe in 2020, INFUSE delivers ingredient solutions that meet new demands around nutritional balance, plant-based, and label-friendliness. It offers the ease of a blended solution that speeds up development cycles, so it can get innovations to market faster.

The Application Centre has an ability to offer solutions for the current consumer trends like calorie or fat reduction, fibre and protein enriched foods, or plant-based foods etc. Besides these emerging trends, Cargill wants to meet META dairy manufacturers’ needs like offering more affordable products to market or solving their supply chain hurdles by offering them customised easy-to-apply blends. The centre includes pilot facilities that mimic full-scale dairy processing production lines, enabling Cargill ingredient and application specialists to rapidly test ingredient solutions in real-world conditions.

Cargill Foods META Executive Committee Member & Chief Product and Marketing Officer, Cem Beysel, said that the centre will serve as a regional innovation area. Beysel added, “As Cargill, we have been trying to support food and beverage manufacturers both in Turkey and in the Middle East and Africa with our ever-expanding products and services. With this investment in Bursa Orhangazi, we will serve our customers as if this place is their own R&D centre. The Application Centre offers manufacturers texturising blends.”

Three pillars serve as the foundation for Cargill’s customer focus in META: an unwavering attention to providing on-trend solutions, a commitment to speed to market, and access to deep technical expertise and resources to create ingredient blends tailored to meet each customer’s unique needs.

“With more than 300 ingredients in our toolbox, we can quickly develop, deliver and optimize prototypes, dramatically shortening bench development time,” Beysel said.

The company is investing $5 million to expand

Start ups

AgFarm aims to revolutionise the agricultural world digitally by allowing the buyers to access and buy agro-inputs with just a few clicks

Vaman Alawadhi, a young entrepreneur with a passion to craft his own niche in the agro inputs sector, along with his partner Sandeep Chauhan has launched a Dubai based agrochemical start-up ‘AgFarm’.

AgFarm aims to revolutionise the agricultural world digitally by allowing the buyers to access and buy agro-inputs with just a few clicks. Following their vision of producing and providing high-quality agro-based products to Indian consumers the newly launched company has now opened its offices in India as well.

AgFarm will be the first agrochemical company whose products, which includes herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, and plant growth regulators, will only be available on e-commerce platforms like nurture.retail, DeHaat, AgroStar, FAARMS etc at never-before attractive prices. At these platforms AgFarm will unlock the digital connections between manufacturers, retailers and dealers and will also allow them to buy the products at affordable prices with best quality assurance. Other than getting the delivery of AgFarm products at their doorstep the buyers will also get additional discounts by using digital payment modes.

Vaman Alawadhi, the Director of AgFarm, said, “It is high time to modernise the agriculture sector in India in every possible way to ensure food quality, food safety, and cost competitiveness. Today, when we are on the verge of adopting modern technologies such as IoT, AI/ML and agri-drones in farming, we should also adopt and promote digital buying and selling of agro inputs to break the vicious circle of mediators and give the dealers, retailers and farmers direct access to manufacturers, leading to fair prices and authentic products for them.”

AgFarm aims to revolutionise the agricultural world

Agro chems – Chemicals, Inputs

Corprima will provide tomato and okra farmers across the country with superior crop protection against fruit borers

FMC India, an agricultural sciences company, has announced that it has launched a new insecticide Corprima.

Powered by FMC’s world’s leading Rynaxypyr insect control technology, Corprima will provide tomato and okra farmers across the country with superior crop protection against fruit borers.

The innovative insecticide Corprima has been proven to deliver better returns on investment to farmers by having a longer duration pest control as well as enhanced flower and fruit retention leading to larger harvests of better quality.

According to the Indian Institute of Vegetable Research, tomato farmers across the country lose up to 65 per cent of their yields to fruit borers every year. The infestation of this pest leads to flower dropping and poor plant health resulting in poor quality fruiting, thus adversely impacting crop yields.

Corprima, powered by Rynaxypyr active, promises to provide a superior and long-lasting protection from fruit borer pests which saves farmers’ time, costs and effort to protect their crops.

FMC India President, Ravi Annavarapu said, “The past year saw a record horticultural crop production in the country. However, every year, tomato and okra farmers incur heavy losses due to fruit borer pests, diseases and post-harvest losses amongst other factors. At FMC, we use innovation to solve the challenges faced by farmers by introducing sustainable products and solutions. The introduction of Corprima is a testimony to FMC’s commitment to bring novel solutions to meet farmers’ crop protection needs. I’m confident that Corprim will help tomato and okra farmers improve their incomes through higher yields of better quality.”

Introduced in 6gm, 17gm and 34gm packs, Corprima will meet the crop protection needs of small, marginal and big farmers.

Corprima will provide tomato and okra farmers

Agrotech

FamERP is known to help manage farms and farmlands seamlessly and efficiently

FarmERP is a future-ready Enterprise-Resource Management software platform designed by the co-founders of Shivrai Technologies. It is known to help manage farms and farmlands seamlessly and efficiently.

Data Capturing and Data Management both are advantageous practices that every industry requires. FarmERP facilitates the provision of every service that is required by an agri-business in the full circle from start to end. From accounting for the most minute expenses to executing the largest orders, all the data are recorded and organised in a very systematic form for the ultimate calculations to be accurate.

Having a well-organised record of all activity facilitates the farmers to produce a better-quality yield. A well-managed and an organised structure can influence the right decisions to be taken at every step of the way, making certain that every arrow pulled has a relatively greater chance of capturing the bull’s eye. This is where FarmERP comes into frame to try and aid the smoother functioning of farms by helping farmers resolve their farming problems effectively, efficiently, and seamlessly.

Additionally, many farmers face hurdles in the financial aspect of business and as the yield quality keeps fluctuating; it also affects the money it makes. With the inculcation of an Enterprise-Resource Planning software like FarmERP, the chance of fluctuation in the quality is minimized as per practical possibilities, hence, stabilising the income of farmers.

Loans and transactions are also problems that FarmERP helps farmers to resolve. This aspect of the software makes sure to eliminate the possibility of exploitation of the farming families.

FarmERP’s enhanced software holds in place the existence of an intelligent layer that not only records business information, but also processes it.

Enterprise-Resource Planning does not only pertain to large-scale businesses, in fact, it is required by all businesses at all scales. The software offers options that are most suitable to particular needs and deliver expected efficiency.

Hence, FarmERP can be the strongest weapon that the Agriculture Industry can deploy to evolve at the highest level of optimisation.

FamERP is known to help manage farms

Agro Universities, Interaction

The need for developing the climate-smart and high-quality fodder varieties was highlighted by the Chief Guest, Dr DK Yadava, ICAR

The ICAR-Indian Grassland and Fodder Research Institute, Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh has recently virtually organised the “Forage Scientists & Seed Producers’ Interface Meeting of Kharif Fodder Crops”.

The Chief Guest, Dr DK Yadava, ADG (Seeds), ICAR emphasised that the sensitisation and showcasing of the varieties will help in increasing the breeder seed indent of the new varieties. The need for developing the climate-smart and high-quality fodder varieties was highlighted by Dr Yadava.

Dr Amaresh Chandra, Director, ICAR-IGFRI, Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh stressed on apprising the stakeholders about the new varieties and their potential/specialities to suit the various niches.

About 75 participants from ICAR-IGFRI, Jhansi; State Agricultural Universities, NGOs, Private Companies, Regional Fodder Stations, DADF and NDDB, etc., attended the meeting.

The need for developing the climate-smart and high-quality

Interaction

Tamil Nadu-based Samunnati has recently launched the Annadata Suraksha Abhiyaan, a dedicated crowd-sourcing campaign driven via Samunnati’s corporate social responsibility outreach. Pravesh Sharma, Director, Samunnati Agro shares insights on the aspects related to ‘Annadata Suraksha Abhiyaan’- major activities, challenges and latest launches

What are the major activities completed around ‘Annadata Suraksha Abhiyaan’ in the past 3 months?

To free farmers from the vulnerabilities of personal risks in agriculture, and to promote the culture of insurance across rural India, especially smallholder farmers, Samunnati launched the Annadata Suraksha Abhiyaan on October 2, 2021. We partnered with Milaap, our crowdfunding partner, for this initiative and have raised close to Rs 1 lakh via their platform. We also reached out to various CSR partners and corporate through our larger network to promote awareness about this platform, as well as to invite their contributions towards this noble cause. We are in discussions with a few other leading agri-tech companies to understand how we can work with them to create a bigger socio-economic impact. On the ground, Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) are our last mile partners to reach individual member farmers and deliver product information, enable documentation and assist in claim settlement.

We have raised over Rs 11.5 lakhs in support of this initiative from various sources, including a payroll campaign conducted internally within Samunnati. Through social media handles dedicated to the initiative, we are sustaining our efforts to bring in more participation from Indian corporates and philanthropists.

What are the challenges that Samunnati faced/is facing while rolling out the programme to beneficiaries?

Data collection has been one of the biggest challenges that the Indian agriculture sector has struggled with over the years. Gathering demographic details of individuals including date of birth, contact number, address with pin code, gender, etc. plays a huge role in being able to provide insurance. Unfortunately, this level of detail is not regularly maintained by most of the FPOs in our nation. Further, owing to constraints with staff and other resources, undertaking data collection has also not been an easy task for FPOs.

On-ground activation and awareness building play an important role in the success of such campaigns. As we work around the ongoing pandemic and various restrictions that have been put in place, we are streamlining our efforts to promote the campaign via offline channels in the coming months.

Number of farmers/ FPOs onboarded to the insurance programme and the markets where ASA created the most impact.

To date, we have onboarded around 12,000 farmers from 40 FPOs across 11 States. A majority of these farmers are from Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Maharashtra owing to our extensive network in these regions. In Gujarat, we have a long-standing association with GujPro which helped us make in-roads in reaching farmers in the region.

How does your company plan to deliver this scheme to India’s smallholder farmers?

Samunnati plans to partner with farmer collectives (FPCs, Cooperatives etc.) and agri enterprises which closely work with small holder farmers to take this scheme to the last mile. We believe this approach is more sustainable, and scalable. So far, we have on-boarded 40+ FPOs, and 1 Agri enterprise and insured 12,000 farmers.

How can Samunnati bring in a revolution in the agri community through ASA?

India is plagued with the following two challenges:

High incidence of farmer accidents and related fatalities – 2000 plus farming accidents and over 100+ fatalities happen every day, leading to estimated daily losses worth Rs 15Cr

Negligible insurance penetration, less than 1 per cent farmers having access to accident-related insurance

Agriculture in itself is plagued with variety of risks and challenges, while a few government/ private sector initiatives are working towards addressing some of them, initiatives around insurance, and farmer protection from financial distress related to accidents are insignificant. 

The initiative Annadata Suraksha Abhiyaan attempts to fill that void by promoting the insurance culture among farmers and providing personal accident coverage through this initiative. We plan to expand the scale and scope of coverage and include risks related to other farming uncertainties in the years to come.

The initiative aims to make agriculture risk free for our farmers, and for India.

What are your plans for the next five years?
We plan to onboard as many as 5 million farmer families on this platform in the next 5 years. We will be approaching this in phases, mapping the progress we achieve each year.

Pooja Yadav

pooja.yadav@mmactiv.com

Tamil Nadu-based Samunnati has recently launched the Annadata

Finance

Benson Hill expects 2021 consolidated revenues to be in the range of $145 to $149 million

Benson Hill, has announced that it preliminarily expects 2021 consolidated revenues to be in the range of $145 to $149 million, ahead of the prior guidance of $127 million. On an organic and normalised basis, revenues in the ingredients segment are anticipated to nearly double versus 2020 due to high demand in the proprietary soy portfolio for the food, feed and oil markets and higher prices for yellow pea ingredients. Revenues in the Fresh segment are expected to be relatively flat versus 2020, as higher volumes were nearly offset by pricing pressure due to softness in the fresh produce market.

The Company preliminarily expects a net loss of $126 to $130 million and non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA loss in the range of $80 to $84 million for 2021. Losses were impacted as a result of start-up costs at the recently acquired Seymour facility and lower gross margins, particularly in the Fresh segment.

“Our 2021 preliminary revenue results demonstrate our ability to scale our supply chain and deliver products to meet our customers’ needs,” said Matt Crisp, Chief Executive Officer of Benson Hill.

 The Company expects 2022 consolidated revenues in the range of $315 to $350 million and an adjusted EBITDA loss that is slightly higher than in 2021. The Company anticipates a significant majority of top-line growth to come from the ingredients segment, with revenues of $250 to $275 million. It is expected that $90 to $100 million of revenue will be derived from the addition of the legacy Creston business.

Benson Hill expects improved financial performance in the Fresh segment based on a modest price recovery as the year progresses and a shift to more Company controlled farmed products. As a result, the Company expects 2022 Fresh revenues to be $65 to $75 million.

Benson Hill expects 2021 consolidated revenues to

R&D

The study has demonstrated that the crop water use model MOPECO can be adapted to many different scenarios

In a collaborative work between the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Soil and Water Management Research, the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM) in Spain, West Texas A&M University, and Texas A&M AgriLife, researchers have adapted a crop model for use in the Texas High Plains to simulate crop water use and corn yield to help producers adjust center-pivot irrigation strategies and maximise profitability with limited water.

Crop producers in this semi-arid region of the Texas High Plains largely depend on groundwater irrigation. Each season, crop producers in the region evaluate how much land area could be irrigated under the pivot with limited water. Addressing this is not straightforward because producers must consider reducing irrigated areas, which influences grain yield, input costs, and the timing of the irrigation applications.

To help producers with these decisions, researchers completed a study that uses 25 years of climatic data to simulate corn production using a range of irrigation capacities, the maximum amount of water that can be delivered to an irrigated acre in a day, to evaluate water allocation strategies that could increase profitability and improve the efficient use of water. 

The model showed that for irrigation capacities representative of the region and a growing season with average rainfall, maximum profitability was achieved by irrigating about 75 per cent of entire pivot area with the remaining area in fallow or dryland cotton. Concentrating water generated greater net returns because of lower seed and fertiliser costs and greater corn yields that compensated for lack of production in fallow areas. In years with seasonal drought, the irrigated area would need to be further constrained to avoid crop failure and maximise profits.

“This study has demonstrated that the crop water use model MOPECO can be adapted to many different scenarios and is a useful tool for improving the environmental and economic sustainability of agricultural systems where water is limiting,” said Alfonso Domínguez researcher of the Centro Regional de Estudios del Agua (CREA) of UCLM.

The study has demonstrated that the crop

AgroPolicy, Agrotech

The technology will support in enhancing productivity even in small private landholding and ensure financial benefits for the farmers

The Government of Sikkim has announced to launch modern farming technology of Hydroponics, Aquaponics and Rooftop farming in the state on February 22, 2022. The launching programme is scheduled to be held in the presence of Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang at Sokeythang, Gangtok. This was informed by the Minister, Agriculture, Horticulture, and Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Services, Lok Nath Sharma while addressing a press conference held at the Training Hall of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Services, Sokeythang.

The Minister highlighted the objectives and purpose for launching the newly developed farming technology of Aquaponics, Hydroponics and Rooftop farming. The technology will support in enhancing productivity even in small private landholding and ensure financial benefits for the farmers, he stated.

Sharma said that hydroponics is the technique of growing plants without soil by using organic nutrients. It would be very beneficial for farmers because it assures higher yield and economic returns compared to natural agricultural practices, because of higher number of harvest cycles. Aquaponics is an integrated food production system that combines raising fish in tanks with soilless plant culture. The nutrient -rich water generated in the procedure while raising fish provides natural fertiliser for plants and these plants help to purify water for the fish.

He informed that the concerned departments have developed four different models of Hydroponics, Aquaponics, Roof top farming of both low cost and high-cost green house at designated premises. The models will remain open for interested individuals to explore wherein the technical experts will guide and educate visitors about the procedure, benefits, structural set-up after scheduled launching of Hydroponics, Aquaponics and Rooftop farming. Besides, the department will provide essential technical support and guidance. An absolute mechanism will be developed to ensure quick response to queries and grievances of the people, he added.

The technology will support in enhancing productivity