eFarm

One of the key issue for farmers is the need for efficient and timely market linkages to sell their produce. The choice of buyers if often limited to the few agents or dealers who are closest to the farm. There is no accurate data available with even government on what is farmer growing in fields as it changes often with season. As there is no live information about the supply side situation, most of the price discovery happens AFTER the harvest is done and based on arrivals at each ‘mandi’ (wholesale market yard). Thus leading to daily distress sales and unpredictable price fluctuations. On demand side as well, very little data or research has been done on the ‘end buyer segment’ namely hotels, caterers, exporters, food processors, retail supermarkets . They too , owing to complexity of present supply system, procure from the mandi for their needs. The daily fluctuations in price, quality and quantity has been a key pain area for all and often these vagaries are passed on to the end customer . All modern industries and businesses today use ICT tools immensely for the planning and management of their operations. Ironically, the use of technology in India’s biggest industry (agriculture) is very minimal. If we have timely information about the demand and supply of the agri industry . most of the crisis can be avoided through advanced planning . The need of the hour is for a simple, dynamic database of farmers and buyers with accurate information on demand and supply information. This database should be easily accessible by anyone with a phone, SMS or web , enabling our farmers to reap the benefits of the wide network of the internet to connect with their buyers . Additionally, by adding agro suppliers, transporters and labour pool to this platform we hope to get the information of all stakeholders in an easy to access format to completely solve all of the farmer’s key crisis points. What is efarmdirect ? • It is a online database of farmers and buyers. Supply side information from farmers such as produce, variety , harvest dates, expected quantity and price are available . Similarly buyers demand , quantity, quality and specifications are also captured. • The portal lists all major agricultural/horticultural crops – vegetables, fruits, flowers, herbs, exotics, cash crops, cereals, pulses in the first phase. In second phase other value added products , dairy , animal husbandry items amy also be included • The data can be searched and filtered based on various parameters to enable proper match • Though farm labour rates in village has gone up(upwards 150 Rupees/day) lack of suffucuent manpower is a key gap. eFarmDirect would be enlisting all unemployed youth in the region, differently abled, semi-skilled labour pool to allow for ‘just in time’ people on-call. • As transport is also operated via brokers, and often the trucks run empty in reverse direction, farmers bear double the expenses for transport to towns. By enlisting all truck operators, a ‘call-taxi’ like system would help utilise trucks more efficiently , thus reducing logistics costs • A farmer does NOT need to be literate or have a computer ! The data can be accessed from phone (via call centre) , SMS (via mobile phone 2-way text messages) or from any internet centre close to them. Franchisors are needed across India to support in data gathering, liasions between farmers and buyers, facilitating transactions. revenue model - registration fee + commosions from sales