Business of Agriculture March April 2019 Edition | Page 38
News & Updates
Bank of Baroda Pioneers Launch
of Agri Digital Platform ‘Baroda Kisan’
B for use, convenience of renting farm
equipment and market linkage for sale of
agri produces.
The development of this first of its kind
initiative will be executed by ITCoE of Bank
of Baroda in partnership with IBM India. It
entails a holistic approach towards solving
agricultural plights by means of providing
reliable and customized information, inputs “Digitization of agri services will have a
huge impact on the Indian economy and
this collaboration is an effort towards
keeping up with the use of technology in
the field of agriculture. Farmers are an
integral part of India and ‘Baroda Kisan’ is
a dedicated platform created to ease their
requirements,” said Mr P S Jayakumar, MD
& CEO, Bank of Baroda.
ank of Baroda, one of the country’s
largest public sector banks, will
develop an agri digital platform called
‘Baroda Kisan’, envisaged to provide a
suite of solutions for all major agricultural
requirements.
Walmart Foundation supports IDEI
irrigation project to raise incomes for
10,000 smallholder farming families
The companies that have signed the MoUs
with Bank of Baroda are: Skymet Weather
Services Pvt. Ltd.; Weather Risk Management
Services Pvt. Ltd.; BigHaat; Agrostar India;
EM3 Agri Services; and Poorti Agri Services
Pvt. Ltd.
Mr B R Patel, General Manager & Head,
Rural & Agri Banking and CSR, Bank of
Baroda said, “India is witnessing new
age technological developments in the
agriculture ecosystem and it is imperative
to make these available to the farmers in
the remotest areas of the country. I thank
the MoU partners for having come together
on this project that not only aims to help
but also ensures an inclusive growth of the
farming community.”
population of Andhra Pradesh are dependent
on agriculture, and yet many farmers live in
poverty and lack access to irrigation systems
or other technologies to help them improve
their productivity and income.
Sustainable agricultural products with
practices are the keystone of the IDEI
program. It will target smallholder farming
families with irrigation interventions and
support for market-oriented development.
Introducing sustainable irrigation will help
smallholder farmers increase the planting
and harvesting window, increase yields, and
enable greater crop variety and productivity,
unlocking new market opportunities. It
will also generate cost savings and reduce
negative environmental impact by curbing
excess water and Fossil Fuel consumption.
T
en thousand smallholder farmers in
Andhra Pradesh are set to benefit from
the introduction of sustainable irrigation
products and practices under a program
offered by International Development
Enterprises - India (IDEI) and supported
with funding from the Walmart Foundation.
Providing a grant of $750,000, the Walmart
Foundation will help IDEI take its Integrating
Smallholder Farmers into Market Systems
program to ten districts in the state. The
program aims to introduce sustainable
irrigation products and practices and create
a complementary support ecosystem that
will boost farm yields, reduce negative
environmental impacts, and increase market
access and smallholder farmer income.
The program is expected to generate an
additional $7.4 million in annual farming
income in the state at the end of the project
period, with individual gains of $400 per
smallholder farmer household per year1.
Substantial water savings in agriculture are
also anticipated, amounting to 33.4 million
m³ of water saved for the state during the
program. More than 62 percent of the
38 Business of Agriculture | March-April 2019 • Vol. V • Issue 2
IDEI will also work to catalyse an
ecosystem of entrepreneurs to provide
access to affordable water-use productivity
technologies and practices and for the
maintenance and upkeep of these systems.
These complementary activities can further
enhance economic opportunities in the
target regions of Andhra Pradesh.
The IDEI grant is a part of the Walmart
Foundation’s commitment, announced
in September 2018, to invest $25
million (approximately Rs180 crores) in
philanthropic initiatives to improve farmer
livelihoods in India over the next five years.