Nuts and Bolts: Farming data the organic way

BANGALORE, INDIA: Farming is becoming more different and difficult as Narayana, Managing Director, Aditi Organic Certifications Pvt Ltd often opines. He talks about real data access, marketing issues that plague farmers, high degree of fragmentation, pricing fairness hassles and sustainability concerns when asked about the condition of this segment in India.

But he also hastens to point out how and where technology can become the wheel that furrows these dry lands towards a future full of better yields.

Here’s a tour of what his organization Aditi Organic Certifications Pvt. Ltd has been up plowing recently.

Tell us about your recent endeavour with digitization and IT, and why it makes sense for what you do?

We have been accredited to carry out inspection and certification according to NPOP, Govt. of India and NOP, USDA Standards. Since we deliver a wide range of certification programs and commit to activities done impartially and in a professional manner, while managing conflicts of interest and ensuring the objectivity of its management system of certification activities; we have been in a unique position when it comes to data. Getting real-time and authentic data is a challenge for farmers and we have been looking for solutions that address some challenges. Lot of data is to be collected and consolidated in a comprehensive manner in our line of work. We needed a solution to cut through some tough patches.

Like?

The existing internal control system and certifying processes were being done in a manual manner and on paper. That made consolidation of data required for the management difficult to track as well as injected issues in authentication of the actual date of inspection and area of inspection. The process from farmer enrolment to issuing of scope certificate was not channelized. That hampers in capturing current status of the projects, which in turn affects the overall performance of the organization. Non-digitized procedures also mean issues in proper management of the data as well as duplication of work.

How do digitisation and adoption of IT help in solving these issues?

We wanted to address the need of conducting inspection of client’s projects much more efficiently while respecting the requirements of the accreditation agencies. Hence we partnered with SourceTrace Systems, to deploy 'eServices Everywhere' (ESE) platform to manage certification processes as well as their Client’s Farmer Groups ICS (Internal Control System). Here, we use mobile software applications and hardware to transact and transmit data from remote areas, and leverage the capability to streamline the inspection processes at field level.

Any incidental advantages?

Yes, this new flavor of data can also help policy-makers at state level track crop-progress and gaps if any. It gives realistic data to traders too and hence every stakeholder sooner or later, benefits. As technology improves we would be able to monitor a big span of activities, while sitting in our office through advanced webcasts etc. Inspectors get better access and consolidation is stronger. With visual elements and GPS etc, even validation part gets vastly strengthened.

Did you have any worries on last-mile parts with the way connectivity snags affect our hinterlands?

The way things stand today was not so five to six years back. There was a time when Internet was an impossible thought in remote areas, but thankfully progress is visible. Plus, this tool evolves offline and is developed for future. Difficulties are present but a lot is improving.

Any key benefits that you are satisfied with so far? Is it compatible to your back-end and front-interfaces?

The SourceTrace enterprise mobile solution is allowing access to client’s information on inspector’s mobile device as and when required and it also equips the inspector to operate both in near real time with connectivity or without connectivity. It does not miss the part of meeting the requirements of the Internal Control Systems and accreditation agencies. So now, the cost of client’s information and delivery will get reduced and visibility of inspection in real time would become better. This will help us improve overall productivity. Compared to manual inspection, digitized inspection enables access to information anytime, anywhere and with timely and accurate client‘s as well as their farmers information for conducting inspections. This further helps with centralized data for management information system.

How do you plan to build up on this? Organically?

This is a pilot project and we might make it mandatory for all stakeholders since we are happy with realistic data and consolidation ease. We may also take it to other countries like Vietnam or Ethiopia where we operate.