“Food Processing is bogged by supply, infrastructure challenges and intermediaries who hamper farm-to-fork transition”

Connecting farmers to markets, AgriBazaar is a new-age digital (electronic) e-mandi for small-farm owners (farmers), merchants and buyers where they can buy and sell agri-produce directly at mutually transparent and best price mechanisms without the involvement of middlemen. Founded in 2016, the idea behind AgriBazaar delivers tech-enabled future-ready solutions to the farming community in a frictionless manner and revolutionise the way post-harvest management services are processed across the country. AgriBazaar facilitates Rs 9000 crore gross merchandise value (GMV) worth of transactions since its inception, making it one of India’s largest online agri-trading marketplace. With a team of information technology professionals, data scientists, agronomists and on-field workers the platform has developed and provides advanced solutions including crop monitoring, image-based testing, and AI-based satellite-imaging for crop-yield estimations, weather tracking and soil moisture detection, among others. In addition to these core services, the platform also offers allied services such as market intelligence, quality testing and agri-produce insurance. At present, the innovative platform connects around 10,000 traders & processors, over 100 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPO) with its network of over 2 lakh farmers across India. Amith Agarwal, Founder & CEO, AgriBazaar shares his views with AgroSpectrum, on the various ways to make profitable production of food crops in India. Edited excerpts;

How is AgriBazaar contributing to the profitable production of food crops in India?
AgriBazaar provides crop advisory services that help farmers move towards scientific farming with a higher yield, lesser wastage and optimum inputs costs. It is assisting the Indian government in building a farmer database through intelligent data. Crop advisory, smart data and yield estimates will drive profitable food production in our country.

Besides export and processing, what are ways to utilise the surplus production of food crops in the domestic and international market?
Ensuring that farmers can find buyers and vice versa for their produce is a first step in providing an equitable demand-supply gap. AgriBazaar, India’s first and largest private electronic mandi, facilitates the digital-first approach to farmers selling their produce. It allows farmers to save time, transparently ascertain the deal and get higher realisation (selling price) for their crops. With its population size, India needs efficient ways to utilise surplus production by finding buyers and sellers in a fast, reliable, and fair manner.

How would you envisage the future of the food crop market in India?
India’s food crop market is moving towards premiumisation of the small farmers’ produce; farmers will start growing crops that fetch higher price value and require lesser inputs and costs. For example, we witness farmers adopting changing crop patterns like growing mustard with a higher value from traditional rice or wheat. Nutrition fortification and natural farming based agriculture is the future. And consumers expect clean (less chemical and fertilizers) and healthy food crops in the future.

The food grain export industry is struggling with issues such as rejection of food grain consignments by 27 European countries due to pesticide residue. In such a situation, what inputs are required to make food grain production more profitable?

The increase in food grain production demonstrates the willingness and commitment of the government and industry to promote India’s agriculture sector and harness its potential. However, to ensure that these efforts result in a more significant market share, especially in international markets, the government needs to implement good agricultural practices and provide a framework for using lesser chemicals in the fields. Furthermore, awareness needs to be created at the grassroots levels to ensure that our food grain production adheres to international food safety requirements and we go for global food, safety & health certifications as per EU and other nations where we want to export.

What steps should be initiated to strengthen food crop processing and procurement according to you?
A majority of the challenges faced by food crop processing and procurement result from the traditional bottlenecks faced by India’s agriculture sector. Adopting technology in agriculture (agritech) is helping in solving several pain points across the spectrum of the traditional agriculture value chain. For instance, agritech firms like AgriBazaar offering quality management and traceability services can address the problems of uneven quality and lack of large-scale quality testing. Likewise, supply chain technology and output linkages agritech providers can help resolve inefficiencies in the post-harvest supply chain. At AgriBazaar, we have developed a business model to address these end-to-end challenges while catering to the interests of the growers and buyers. Our mission is to empower the sector by developing technology to deliver efficiency, transparency, and traceability in the agri value chain.

What are the challenges faced by the startup industry in food crop processing?
The food processing sector is uniquely positioned at the intersection of agriculture, manufacturing and services. It is currently valued at $260 billion. It can evolve into a sizable growth engine for the Indian economy. That said, it is also true that the sector is marred with challenges that range from supply-side bottlenecks to infrastructure challenges, from quality issues to intermediaries who hamper the farm-to-fork transition of the produce. And capital investment has been weak, and the government needs to create policies to attract private and global capital in this sector.
We aim to fix the broken supply chain by directly linking the farmers with food processing companies – by connecting demand with supply. We started with the idea that a technology-driven platform could help the agri value chain operate significantly fewer overheads and hidden inefficiencies. We digitised the agri value chain with proof of origin and authenticity, enabling traceability whilst bringing down agri-trade commissions from 2-3 per cent to 0.5 per cent.

Dipti Barve

dipti.barve@mmactiv.com

Connecting farmers to markets, AgriBazaar is a