e-Agriculture & Ecology, Winner 2013
Apple project creates a profitable partnership between investors and farmer groups, by setting up joint agro-processing enterprises, based on solid feasibility studies and business plans. The project has been implemented in 108 villages of Uttrakhand and Himachal Pradesh through 6 collection centers, using web and mobile technologies.Started in 2007, the project is based on apple farming. The farmers included in this project are small and marginal. The deliverable starts from the beginning of apple cultivation till the col-lection of ripened apples. The project helps in: technical inputs on apple farming; apple orchards maintenance; weather forecasting through SMS; information on current market rates; purchasing their products based on market price; giving shares for their contributions. This farmer-run joint venture enters into a loan agreement with (social) investors and becomes responsible for setting-up and running the business in a commercially responsible manner.
- Meet its loan obligation.
- Capitalise the company.
- Pay premium prices to the farmers, who supplied produce and/or.
- Invest in new profitable business ventures (allowing the farmer to move further up the value-addition chain).
As a result, the farmers benefit in the form of good and assured prices for their commodities and possibly additional premium or dividend payments if sufficient profit is realised. In such partner-ship, the (social) investor, the social conscious entrepreneurs and the farmers become mutually de-pendent business parters
CropIn addresses needs of agriculture sector by bridging the information asymmetry using innovative web and mobile technologies. CropIn helps farmers in real time, connects with financial institutions and other stakeholders. Currently, Pepsico, Omnikan, FieldFresh, Bharti-Walmart, Tata Rallis, Paprika, Mapro, HDFC Bank and Technico-ITC are using this solution. Till date the application has monitored 15,000 + acres of agricultural land in India.
As the population increases, efficient crop production and reduced wastage is crucial to food se-curity. CropIn Technology provides online farm visibilityfor better crop management. The prod-uct is a low cost and affordable cloud based platform that integrates mobile technology into assisting the agricultural industry. Farmers are benefitted by getting the access to information about best practices and latest technology in agriculture that has been only available at institute level. A hand held device loaded with CropIn Apps is carried by field officers that help them to trackbthe farms on real time. The apps guide the field officer to capture information and visuals of the farm.
Crop in helps the farmers in following ways:
- It assists with real time help to farmers, if they face issue in the farms.
- It connects the farmers with financial institutions.
- Losses are reduced by having better control and more visibility into farms’ progress during the season.
The target companies are pertaining mostly to the domains of food processing, contract farming, export oriented, pesticides and seed production, banks where crop monitoring and traceability is an issue.
Birthday Forest is a unique and innovative web and mobile based platform that encourages tree plantation. The initiative also addresses issues such as climate change, deforestation, saves watershed and helps to celebrate a “green” birthday. In just 6 months, it has created a significant buzz in Nepal. Birthday Forest was established to allow people to contribute to nature for creating ecological harmony. The biggest problem is that even though people are aware about forest degradation and climate change, they seldom have time to act on this social issue. Talking about planting trees, the hassle includes finding nursery for a sapling, travelling to find land and planting it. Birthday forest also takes care of finding saplings, traveling, planting and the biggest challenge of growing it.
Birthday Forest contributes in ecological harmony in following ways:
- It helps corporates celebrate their corporate birthday, (corporate anniversary) by planting trees.
- It also helps community forest user group get incentive via carbon tradin.
- It helps to sink carbon dioxide from atmosphere, increase carbon stock via natural forest and Ultimately help to reduce climate change.
- It encourages plantation by the side of the road in urban area to increase greenery, decrease Noise pollution and to build the aesthetic of the city.
- This initiative also provides a platform for non-residential Nepalese and international community to plant trees in Nepal.