Leads Connect Launches SIGMAA Pilot Study to Double Farmers' Income

Leads Connect Services, a Noida-based Agritech company, launched the Seamless Digital Implementation & Ground Monitoring Platform for Delivering End-to-End AgriTech Analytics Services to Farmers (SIGMAA) pilot study in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, for the benefit of farmers.

The SIGMAA study aims to identify and develop regions for high-value and high-quality crops such as Basmati rice, wheat, and mustard. An additional objective is to double the farmers' income using sustainable farm practices and technological interventions. The study will be conducted for 4 seasons, starting from Kharif 2022–23 (June 2022) and ending in Rabi 2023-2024 (April 2024).

The study was launched in Tulia village of Bareilly by Santosh Gangwar, Member of Parliament. At the launch of SIGMAA, the farmers of Tulia and Jogither villages were advised on the usage of sustainable farm practices and technological interventions. A demonstration of Kisaan drones and fertilizer sprays was also conducted to make the farmers aware on the usage.

Leads Connect chose Bareilly to conduct the pilot study for its potential to be a market linkage hub as the city is not only in proximity to the commercial nodal centres of India but also a thriving urban cluster itself, an indispensable requirement for building a sustainable value chain. For the pilot study, more than 150 farmers will be onboarded from these two 2 villages of Bareilly, using a field app and platform.

After calculating the Agricultural Credit Score (ACS) for each farm and farmer, seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides will be distributed based on expert advisory. The study would also utilize a technology-based crop suitability analysis report to determine the best crop for the region. During the crop cycle, real-time monitoring will be conducted in situ and through the one-stop digital platform. Satellite & IOT/UAV will be leveraged for continuous data collection. The learnings from the study will be used to develop and implement models across Uttar Pradesh.

The launch also saw the presence of top executives of Leads Connect Services - Ghanshyam Khandelwal, Director & Mentor; Navneet Ravikar, Chairman & Managing Director; Richa Khandelwal, Director; Yogesh Kumar Singh, Vice President & Research Head; Syed Irshad Haider, India Head Crop & Govt. Business; Puneet Pandey, Chief Risk Analyst; Deepak Srivastava, Senior Risk Analyst; Dr. Alok B Mukherjee, Chief Remote Sensing-GIS Analyst, R&D Head and Nitesh Awasthi, Chief Remote Sensing-GIS Analyst.

On the launch of the pilot, Navneet Ravikar, Chairman & Managing Director, Leads Connect Services, commented, "The organization is looking forward to SIGMAA because of its ground-level impact. The study will be able to give farmers crucial information about which crop and its variety are most suitable for sowing with just a click. Furthermore, they’ll have access to real-time agronomic intelligence, forecasting, and support throughout the crop cycle to drastically improve yield. We’re even giving Drone Analytics as a Service (DraaS) to farmers to assess crop health, fertilizer/pesticide spraying, and crop loss. The pilot also solves one of the hardest challenges for farmers: market linkages. LeadsConnect will lend them the appropriate support to sell their produce at fair and profitable prices."

He further added that "There is a real need to decipher the influence of local field conditions on agricultural productivity. With this study, we’ll build a digital platform that can take in real-time scenarios and use predictive analytics to support farmers from sowing to selling. Capitalizing on stage-wise data to reduce crop risk, and improve farm management practices, we'll provide farm inputs, send alerts and share advisories on how to enhance yield, effectively doubling income for farmers."

“Technological interventions and studies like SIGMAA can help all market stakeholders with the right data to ensure efficiency in their processes. Such a platform does not only benefit the farmer with insights essential to farming but also provides stakeholders, risk managers, and decision-makers with the right data crucial for efficient planning and policy making. It is a great tool to connect farmers to an integrated value chain, unlock their potential and realize tremendous financial gains. The platform also strengthens the agriculture market and supply chain management to enhance logistics and improve productivity and profitability for the farmers, said Ghanshyam Khandelwal, Director and Mentor, Leads Connect Services.

“Through efforts from organizations such as Leads Connect we can now utilize the power of tech to help build market linkage of different segments and make the entire food ecosystem more efficient - the ultimate beneficiary being the consumer”, adds Khandelwal.

Leads Connect is working closely with nodal agencies such as Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre (MNCFC), Agriculture Insurance Company (AIC), and Irrigation & Waterways Department, West Bengal for research-based projects related to yield estimation, crop cutting experiments (CCE), mapping agricultural infrastructures, and demarcation of flood-prone areas, respectively.

The company has also been actively involved in projects pertaining to disaster management, urban analytics, and health analytics, using cutting-edge technologies such as satellite remote sensing analytics and machine learning (ML)/deep-tech intelligence since 2018. It has worked with the AIR Institute, Spain to investigate the biophysical effects of climate change in North-East India and with the Birla Institute of Technology (BIT) in Mesra-Jharkhand to assess the environmental dynamics of Jharkhand and develop an ML model.