The/Nudge Forum launched the CISCO Agri Challenge on 18 December with a prize of Rs 2 crores and kick-started mindful conversations on how we can provide farmers with their fair share through innovative technologies and a collaborative solution-centric approach. The launch had prominent speakers, namely Prof K. Vijay Raghavan, Principal Scientific Advisor, Dr Kalpana Shastry, G.R. Chintala-Chairman, NABARD, Alka Upadhyaya, Additional Secretary, MoRD, K. P. Krishnan, Chair Professor, NCAER, Charanjit Singh, Joint Secretary, NRLM, Ritu Verma, co-founder of Ankur Capital Fund, Nipun Mehrotra, founder of The Agri Collaboratory, and Anil Kumar SG, founder and CEO, Samunnati.
In an attempt to build a better future for India’s farmers, the Cisco Agri-Challenge by The/Nudge Centre for Social Innovation, in partnership with the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, is aimed at a nationwide contest for agri-tech startups. Sameer Garde, president of Cisco India, addressed the launch, saying, “The time to act on this vision has never been better and I believe startups, with technology serving as an ally and enabler, are best positioned to affect change where it is needed the most. One such area is agriculture, where India grapples with the twin challenges of low productivity and rapidly falling profitability. We’ve had probably one of the lowest farmer incomes in the world at around $1,700 per farmer. And the stress on farmers is rising due to declining favourable inputs. So, the challenges in agriculture are, in my opinion, far too complex. There is a lack of understanding. There are smallholdings, multiple stakeholders, infrastructure, connectivity, communication, diversity, type of land, markets, etc., where much can be done.”
Stressing on the need to accelerate digital transformation in the agriculture sector, Garde continued, “This actually needs the ecosystem approach, whether it is startups, government technology companies, research institutes, industry bodies, individuals and cooperative society. There is a need to work together to harness the full potential of digitalisation and AI and new technology. We at Cisco focused on bringing the ecosystem together to make an impact where it matters the most. Given that talent is probably India’s biggest strength, we are committed to working with leaders and entrepreneurs to bring the benefits of digitisation to all.”
Founder & CEO of The/Nudge Foundation Atul Satija gave an overview of the agri-challenge and spoke of the background of the organisation which started in 2015 as a non-profit poverty alleviation organisation. The/Nudge started working with underprivileged groups in skill development who migrated to cities from rural areas and the organisation gave them skills and employability and put them in jobs. “While we are doing grassroots work in rural communities, the challenge is that Mahatma Gandhi’s quote, ‘India lives in villages’, is true even today. The reality is that 86% of India’s farmers hold less than 2 hectares of land. It is very difficult to make farming viable where the input cost is very high. The agriculture sector has grown but the income of the small farmers has not moved at par,” said Satija.
Prof K. Vijay Raghavan delivered the keynote address and launched the challenge. Prof Vijay Raghavan spoke extensively on how farming looks in India in terms of both crops and livestock and how the agri-challenge plans to work along the lines of this and issues related to seeds, water, soil, markets and livelihood. “We are caught up in a 20th century model in many aspects and need to go to a 21st century model. First of all, we came here from the relentless use of humans in general. And while that has been extraordinary in terms of the growth of humanity, industry and farming, we need to be differently innovative at this time. The reason we came here is that agriculture, the domestication of plants and livestock, allowed the growth of human societies but it became limiting because you could not cultivate more on the land because soil depleted.”
“The invention of the Haber-Bosch process allowed the extraction of nitrogen from the atmosphere converting it to ammonia and this changed agricultural fertilizers. Technology completely transformed agriculture in the early 20th century. The use of unlimited water allowed its growth into a major global industry. This has absolutely transformed the world, but the minus side of this is that small farming, the diversity of food we eat, started going down globally. Farming on small landholding hasn’t gone down in India, but there are substantial land holdings in India. Whether holdings grow bigger or smaller, we must be prepared for sustainable agriculture in terms of the land and environment. We have no alternative but to look at sustainable development through technology,” he added.
Prof Vijay Raghavan further stressed on how this challenge can revolutionize the agriculture sector. “The market is a big determinant. If the farmer is able to access markets, with all these decision-making and aggregation technologies available, then the farmer can make a profit. We’ve seen over the last few years the dramatic growth of the startup industry. On the positive side, they have grown on the periphery of our technology institutions and scaled to national and global acclaim. But we have not sufficiently opened routes to other areas which are socially and economically important. In other words, e-commerce is an area for relatively easier growth, drones and AI are becoming more available in the urban sector. We should therefore change our structures and our relationships with academia, industry and startups, to allow the farm sector to become bigger. This is what the challenge is doing.”
The agri-challenge is envisioned as a prestigious inducement platform where catalytic innovation will put the needs of the farmer at the centre and grow momentum in the agri-tech arena. “There are more than 25,000 farmer suicides in India every year even today. We cannot have a thriving agriculture sector with poor farmers and farmer suicides. The good news, however, is that we are at a stage in our country’s journey where we have a large number of technologists, engineers, innovators, and in the last ten years, we have seen an insanely large amount of activity in our ecosystem. India’s agri-tech sector is already the second-largest in the world. There are opportunities and investments and a huge opportunity for record farm inputs,” added Satija.