Shivar Feri in celebrations of Rallis Samrudh Krishi

Honorable Chandrakant Patil, Minister of Revenue relief and rehabilitation with
Mr. V Shankar, MD & CEO, Rallis India at Rallis Samrudh Krishi - Sugarcane productivity
improvement initiative by Rallis India

Rallis India Limited, a TATA Enterprise with a deep farmer connect for over a century, one of India’s leading crop care companies and a leading player in the Indian Crop Protection industry, organized a ‘Shivar Feri’( Field Visit) in Kolhapur to celebrate the success of its flagship initiative Rallis Samrudh Krishi (RSK) for sugarcane stakeholders on 14 September 2017. The “Shivar Feri” was attended by Honorable Chandrakant Patil, Member of Maharashtra Legislative Council, Minister of Revenue relief, and rehabilitation with Mr. V Shankar, MD, and CEO, Rallis India, and Dr. Y.S.P Thorat, Director, Rallis India. The event was also attended by Seniors Officials of 15 sugar Mills from Maharashtra and around 450 Progressive sugarcane growers.

The “Rallis Samrudh Krishi” initiative for sugarcane crop in Maharashtra was inaugurated in December 2016. Under this program, Rallis India conducted an extensive research with key stakeholders to understand their concerns of staggered sugarcane crop growth and to enable increase in farm income. On the basis of this research, the company devised effective end-to-end agri-solutions such as Rallis Innovation Chemistry Hub (RICH) certified packages of practices (PoP) to enhance crop productivity and economics and deployed Rallis’ digital services and expert helplines. These PoPs consist of relevant and customized information on agricultural inputs and products, innovative solutions with advice on the right time for implementation, agronomic processes and methods.

In FY 2016 – 17, the RSK initiative has been implemented with selected 200 farmers across 62 Territories covering 17 crops in Kharif & Rabi. Apps such as Drishti, Samadhan & Sampark have been key to its execution and success. Drishti provides predictive advisory services which include accurate pest forecast (critical pest where support is a delight factor). Samadhan is an app that gives farmers the access to customized and dynamic PoP, weather forecast information, latest updates on crop output prices, flash news on agriculture. The app also helps them connect with Rallis India expert for immediate solutions. The Sampark app enables access to Rallis India Field Force for complete PoP besides full details on Rallis India’s basket of products. It is also used as a tracking and monitoring tool for the execution of the RSK concept in various parts of the country.

Speaking about the flagship initiative, Mr. V Shankar, CEO and MD, Rallis India, said, “Rallis India has engaged with farmers for the past 165 years and with new challenges facing farmers in India, we have become increasingly passionate about providing effective agriculture solutions and new research-based technologies to them that can enhance their cropping value and thereby their socio-economic status. It is heartening to see the success of the initiative for sugarcane farmers. This has been enabled by customized and dynamic packages of practices, adoption of advanced communication and predictive technologies for information and insights sharing through our apps such as Dhrishti, Samadhan and Sampark. We are also greatly helped by our channel relationships & alignment. We believe that consistently building our own team capabilities has been one of the key success drivers. With multiple crops in Maharashtra our major focus has been fruits and vegetables, pulses, cotton and of course, sugarcane.”

Speaking about the need for intervention for sugarcane crop in Maharashtra, Honorable Chandrakant Patil, Member of Maharashtra Legislative Council, Minister of Revenue relief and rehabilitation, said, “Sugarcane is a key commercial crop in India with total cane acreage 52.84 Lakh hectares in 2015-16. Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are the three key states growing sugarcane in India with Maharashtra covering about 9.4 Lakh hectares area with a productivity of 36 Mt Per acre and offers tremendous scope for yield improvement and farm income. We are thankful to Rallis India for extending their expertise through the RSK initiative and addressing sugarcane farmers’ issues in a scientific and consultative manner, which has greatly benefited them. We will continue to support/invest in wider implementation of these research-based technological interventions with Rallis India’s expertise and channel relationships, for Maharashtra’s farmers growing other crops too.”