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.