SK Cold Storage

Skymet Team met “S. K. Cold Storage” at the India Afghanistan Trade and Investment Show (IATI) held during 27 to 30 September 2017, SK cold storage is an Ahmedabad based company, dealing in fresh and cold storage potatoes. Since last few years S. K. Cold Storage has concentrated on export of potatoes to international markets at including Mauritius, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Russia and Sri-Lanka.

They have about more than 200 farmers working for them. The project team met Mr. Ushir Joshi (Director) of S. K. Cold Storage during the event and explained him the objectives of the project and the benefits, it is delivering to the farmers and overall betterment of the community. Following the discussions, Mr. Joshi visited few of the project geographies to see the actual impact of the services which are been given to the farmers under the PCSRA project.

In October 2018, S.K. Cold Storage reverted to Skymet showing interest to avail such services for their farmers. They indicated that they need farm tagging of their farmers, providing them agri services, giving them the weather forecasts, fertilizers to being used in farms & the crop performance during the period.

Skymet has proposed the following services to them to be executed as pilot service on a set of 20 farmers. The services are going to be started soon. The proposed services are as follows:

Farmer Profiling: Profiling is the addition of geographical information, usually in the form of latitude and longitude coordinates. In the past, the extent of crop loss was based on “eye estimates” or declarations by farmers, resulting in errors. In a bid to reduce such errors and to ensure that farmers are compensated adequately, geo tagging of land will be done for better assessment. Geo tagging will benefit farmers as it will provide comprehensive evidence errors.

Farmer Digital Diary: Farmer digital diary is an innovative mobile application that provides an easy, comprehensive and trackable platform to the farmers to keep record of all their farming activities in a virtual mode. Farmers can use it for recording the various day to day farm activities like land preparation, sowing, irrigation, fertilizers application, soil moisture on date, occurrence or outbreak of disease and pest infestation, crop stage etc. Through this farmer can also maintain the record of the various costs associated with the farming. This help farmers to plan upcoming activities effectively, mitigate risk efficiently and map their profit proficiently. By providing such platform to farmers, we can capture the information about the entire crop cycle of any crop at any region very accurately. Not only this, we would be able to know as what remedial measures could be taken in general if any pest infestation occurs, what is the average quantity of fertilizer farmers require, what mitigation measures should be taken by the farmers to hedge the risk etc.

Sample Soil Testing: Soil testing has become an important tool for assessing soil fertility and arriving at proper fertilizer recommendations.

Nutrient Mapping/Management Plan: It can be used to increase the efficiency of all the nutrient sources a crop uses while reducing production and environmental risk, ultimately increasing production and profit.

Crop-advisories: Crop advisories would be provided on biweekly basis for all geographies covered under the project. The same would be based on the live weather data, weather forecast and current crop conditions and it will be consisting the comments of crop experts to guide farmers as what practices should be followed at various cropping stages.

Crop Sensors and Cameras: Skymet propose to install one set of crop sensor and a camera along with an AWS. AWS, crop sensor & camera are solar powered IoT devices containing advanced sensing technology — including a six-band spectrometer and 4-way net radiometer that measure crops, along with an advanced acoustic rain gauge.

Pest Forecasting/Pest Management: Skymet wish to develop pest forecasting model for the geographies covered under the project. Early warnings and forecasts based on biophysical methods provide lead time for managing impending pest attacks and thus minimize crop loss, optimize pest control and reduce the cost of cultivation.

Yield Estimation:Yield estimation with reasonable accuracy prior to harvest is important, since timely interventions can take place in case of low yields are predicted.

Mobile App & Chat Room: Since the number of smart phone users are increasing among the farming community, the crop advisories are proposed to be delivered to the farmers through the Mobile application, which would give farmer an easy access to the reliable information and a platform to discuss the issue related to the farming among the other farmers and other stakeholders through the virtual chat room.

The delivery of such services directly to the farmers will make them more aware and updated, without being dependent on any person or channel. Since the digital interfaces are picking pace for service delivery in many industries and sectors in India, agriculture too is gradually getting updated and moving towards the online information systems, which is undoubtedly is a boon for the farmers.

Through the set of services mentioned above, an integrated package of information about the weather and crop could be provided to the farmers, which will make farmers more pro-active, better prepared and risk-free. Also, since the information given to them would be real time, there would be no consequences of loss occur even if the weather or crop condition deviate from the normal condition. There would be full tracking of the farmers activities and crop progress and hence impact on yield caused by the change in weather calculated.

Aga Khan Foundation

The Aga Khan Foundation is addressing some of the key developmental challenges faced by poorest and most marginalized communities across the world, by utilizing the human, financial and technical resources.

In India, Aga Khan Foundation and its sister agency, the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, India (AKRSP (I)) together aims to support the marginalized communities by doing the economic development and and environmental protection through community-based approaches to natural resource management (NRM) and livelihood enhancement at the village level.

Skymet offered a exposure visit to Aga Khan foundation in Samastipur and demonstrated its services that could help farmers in the state to be more resilient to the weather-led risks and to hence be more productive. Aga Khan foundation appreciated the services of Skymet and the consortium agencies have agreed to buy services for the farmers. The number of beneficiaries of each of the agency are 500 farmers in each of the five districts. Nav Jagriti in Saran and Siwan, Samagra Sikshan Evam Vikas Sansthan (SSEVS) in West Champaran, Kaushalya Foundation in Muzaffarnagar, Aga khan Rural Support Program in India (AKRSP (I)) in Samastipur are the implementing agencies who would be purchasing the services.

In its services, Skymet would provide a set of customized and real time weather forecast, weather alerts and crop advisories for each of the district, directly to the farmers.

(ACT), Bhuj, Gujarat

Skymet recently has signed a contract with ACT to provide weather data and weather advisory to its farmer in Madhya Pradesh by installing Automated Weather Station (AWS) at two location in state.
Arid Communities and Technologies or ACT is a professional voluntary organization based at Bhuj, Kachchh district in Gujarat, India. Registered under Societies Act, 1860 and Charitable Trust Act, 1950, ACT is founded by a group of young professionals interested in improving the quality of development delivery by Government and Non-government agencies. ACT strives to strengthen livelihoods in arid and semi-arid regions by improving access to technological and institutional solutions to resolve ecological constraints, in collaboration with communities.
ACT is emerging as an important hub to monitor groundwater management and salinity intrusion in Kachchh district. By virtue of several studies done and projects implemented, ACT has been able to build rich knowledge base in this particular field. ACT also provide training and capacity building to the communities.
During a meeting at Vadal village of Junagarh district of Gujarat, ACT shown its interest to avail weather based services for its farmer in Madhya Pradesh. The team later visited the AWS site in Bhavnagar and Banaskantha districts in Gujarat. Upon looking on the efficacy of the AWS functioning and accuracy of its data, the organization signed a contract to provide weather data and weather advisory to 405 farmer members based in Ratlam and Burhanpur district of Madhya Pradesh. The data would be provided to the farmers on the mobile through the app for one year. To deliver the information, AWS too would be installed at those two locations.