Technology has been infecting all of us, and has touched almost all the fields and sectors. When we talk of technology, networking and plotting the data on a software model is a thing which cannot be kept off from this technology blanket. Agriculture is also witnessing the influence of technological advancement. From online seed purchase to market access, technology has hovered the farms and the farm practices. Many firms and the government is participating in this effort of digitalizing and making the agricultural fields technologically advanced. One of such firm is US based “SourceTrace”.
In conversation with CEO of SourceTrace,Dr Venkat Maroju, told Krishi Jagran about the innovations and social responsibility, SourceTrace has been performing by delivering its services around. SourceTrace system specializes in agricultural software mobile applications with prime focus on sustainable agriculture and empowerment of smallholders. SourceTrace is a farmer centric mobile application which helps in managing the agriculture value chain all the way to the last mile to enable small farmers to participate in global markets. The mobile applications are scalable from small co-operatives, farmer producer companies to large agribusiness corporations and government agencies working in the sustainable development sector.
SourceTrace mobile applications provides complete visibility from field to market and tracks the value chain at the source even in remote, low bandwidth environments. eService Everywhere (ESE) helps to capture all interactions at the touchpoints of the smallholders at the field level for enhanced traceability and improved accountability of the value chain. The platform sets the industry standard for mobile applications successfully in three continents.
The software platformcontains advisory data butit does not really generate content, said Dr. Venkat. It uses tools to communicate and manages the content. This application helps organizations, cooperative, agro business, Governments etc who work for a common denominator i.e. small marginal farmer.Small holders mainlymarginal ones, are being advantaged by the software.
Food security problems would be faced by 9 billion of population by 2050. We need to produce 50% more food to suffice our needs, and due to the limited land that we have, there is a need to increase food productivity and a proper watch is needed to augment the sustainability and productivity.The economic status of the farmers has to be raised given that there is an urgent need to push the farmers up on the social ladder to help their income grow.
The software is unique in the form that the farmer does not interact directly with the software but the organizations help the farmers to be a part of the software indirectly by incorporating them with the organization which keep a watch on the production line.This application helps organizations, cooperative, agro business, governments etc who work for a common denominator i.e. small marginal farmer.
Dr. Venkat cleared the suspicion of crippled technology infrastructure by mentioning that the software does not need internet connectivity for seamless working and hence the model works perfectly even in the remotest of areas. The various modules of the software are farmer profiling ,geo-tagging of farm, sowing , pest and disease management , crop monitoring, crop sale to cost of cultivation at pre farm gate.
Traceability is one of the major arms of SourceTrace. Traceability is an increasingly common element of public and private systems for monitoring compliance with quality, environmental, and other product and/or process attributes related to food. Traceability is therefore becoming a pre-requisite to establish safety of food products.
SourceTrace has scattered its presence across Asia, Africa and South and Central America, operating in about 17 countries and has more than100 customers. SourceTrace works towards empowering more than 3 Million farmers which has 30% of the Indian ratio. In the next 5 years, the company is planning to target 10 million farmers. Dr. Venkat told Krishi Jagran that government is one of the key players in the agriculture sector and SourceTrace do have its links with the government bodies too. Many small and big agri business firm are part of this software.
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