Krishify: India’s Largest Digital Network of Farmers
Krishify is a unique platform designed to connect and empower India’s farming community. Over the past five years, it has cultivated a vast network of more than 12.5 million farmers across the country, spanning over 60 different crops, including cumin, chili, coriander, and ginger. By offering timely advisory services, backed by qualified agronomists, a centralised call center, and agri-input influencers, Krishify has created a robust ecosystem that provides value-driven support to farmers. This ecosystem has helped deliver more than 5 million advisories to date, fuelling sustained farmer engagement and the platform’s rapid growth.
Why a Cluster-Focused Approach?
As Krishify deepened its involvement in farm management and farmer engagement, it became clear that focusing on crop-specific clusters would yield better results. This led us to identify high-potential crop clusters within our extensive farmer base and concentrate our efforts on cumin cultivation. By working closely with a dedicated group of farmers from Western Rajasthan (primarily in Barmer and Jaisalmer), we leveraged our unique digital and phygital approach to deliver measurable outcomes.
Why Cumin?
Cumin is a high-value crop with strong domestic demand and significant export potential. India, particularly Western Rajasthan, produces some of the finest cumin globally. By zeroing in on this region, we optimized resource use, from advisory services to mechanisation, creating economies of scale. This targeted focus allowed us to implement our Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program, which offers better price discovery for farmers and promotes sustainability in the cumin value chain.
Challenges from the Farmer and Buyer Perspectives
From the farmer’s lens, several key issues emerged:
- The need for timely, accurate advisories on pest and disease management.
- Lack of awareness around IPM techniques and compliance.
- Market linkage challenges, impacting price realization.
From the end buyer’s perspective, gaps related to IPM cumin were apparent:
- Difficulty in discovering compliant farmers.
- Lack of traceability at the farm level, which is critical for exports to markets in Europe and the U.S.
- Lower efficacy of backward integration (BI) programs, where farmers may not follow IPM compliance through the entire growing season.
Launching the IPM Cumin Project
Based on the insights gathered from our cumin supply chain—from pre-sowing to post-harvesting—Krishify launched an IPM cumin project, focusing on sustainability and traceability.
We began by identifying a cluster of 120 farmers already connected to the Krishify platform and cultivating cumin in Barmer and Jaisalmer. Each farmer’s plot was geo-fenced and digitised, creating what we termed “Smart Plots”. These digitised plots allowed us to automate farm health monitoring using satellite data, enabling anomaly detection for better decision-making.
To address the gaps identified, we implemented the following initiatives:
- Customized Advisories: Farmers received personalised, digital, and on-ground advisories tailored to their crop cycles and farm health conditions. This ensured that their IPM practices were optimised at every stage of growth.
- Digital Communities: We built an exclusive digital community within the Krishify app for these farmers, creating a space for two-way communication, peer learning, and real-time support.
- FarmWise Platform: Krishify’s proprietary cloud-based platform, FarmWise, revolutionised farm management by providing full traceability for every step in the farming process. This platform allowed us to track inputs, advisories, and farm health data, ensuring complete transparency.
Training and Awareness on IPM Techniques
Our team conducted regular workshops and training sessions to educate farmers about IPM techniques, focusing on biological pest control and minimising pesticide use. For example, one of our farmers, Bhola Ram, had previously suffered a 10% loss in income after using an incorrect chemical to combat blight. With real-time advisory support from Krishify, he was able to avoid such mistakes in the future, improving both yield and compliance.
Another farmer, Nawla Ram Jani, unknowingly used a banned fungicide after being lured by a local company’s free spraying service. This incident highlights the importance of a robust advisory system to prevent such errors and ensure higher IPM compliance rates.
Outcome and Success of the IPM Cumin Program
Our efforts yielded impressive results. With 75% of the cumin samples passing IPM compliance testing, 45% of those samples had no traces of any banned chemicals, qualifying them as organic produce. As we prepare for the next growing season, we aim to improve the program’s efficacy to 95%. The data collected from the non-compliant plots will be leveraged to enhance advisories and reduce the chances of future failures.
Moreover, with the help of machine learning, our FarmWise platform now features an “IPM Prediction Score” that estimates whether cumin from a particular plot will meet compliance standards, even before the harvest. While this won’t replace lab testing entirely, it will help farmers save on testing costs by identifying non-compliant lots early on.
The Road Ahead: Partnering for Sustainability and Traceability
Krishify’s unique blend of digital technology, personalised advisory services, and phygital engagement has laid the foundation for highly effective backward integration programs. By digitising farms, building communities, and leveraging advanced data analytics, we’ve created a model that ensures complete traceability and maximizes compliance in IPM practices.
With the growing demand for sustainable and traceable agriculture, Krishify is poised to become the ideal partner for institutions seeking to implement backward integration programs. Whether it’s for cumin or any other crop, our technology-driven solutions can help businesses achieve their sustainability and traceability goals with confidence.
Join Us in Building the Future of Sustainable Farming
Our IPM cumin program is just the beginning. With every season, we aim to further refine our processes, improve compliance rates, and deliver greater value to farmers and buyers alike. We invite institutions and companies to partner with Krishify and be a part of this transformative journey in the world of sustainable agriculture. Together, we can build a future where traceability, sustainability, and profitability go hand-in-hand.
Reach out to us today to explore partnership opportunities!
