Over the next several years, UPL, an agriculture product, and solutions company plan to increase its biosolutions business in India.
Biosolutions is a Rs 4,000 crore business globally, and a Rs 400 crore business in India. This is part of the company's shift to a sustainable agricultural business strategy. In the following 24 months, the business intends to offer 30 new products.
According to Jai Shroff, CEO of UPL, sustainability is a primary goal for them, and they aim to help farmers become more resilient while also increasing agricultural production and profitability. Climate change, with its water crisis and heat waves, was the most significant challenge facing agriculture, according to Shroff.
He stated that the firm was dedicated to making agricultural practices more sustainable and that UPL was aiming to develop sustainable technologies and platforms that would change the industry.
UPL announced the commercial launch of their patented Zeba Technology for sugarcane farmers as part of these activities. According to Shroff, the Zeba Technology would save 20% on water and cut the use of fertilizers, lowering total expenses for farmers and increasing their productivity and income. Sugarcane farming requires extensive use of resources such as water, inputs, power, labor, and fuel. Despite high consumption, each stakeholder's return on investment is minimal, with a low yield.
Through optimum utilization of natural resources and use of the Zeba Technology, the business has observed savings of 600 crore liters of water and 500 MT urea of fertilizers while increasing yield by 15% across 10,000 acres of land in multiple pilots with farmers.
On Tuesday, UPL and Shreenath Mhaskoba Sugar Mill in Pune signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for a sustainable sugarcane production program that would serve 4,000 farmers in 70 villages. According to Shroff, they are in talks with five to six sugar mills and want to include them in the program within the next 30 days. In two to three years, the goal was to scale up to a million acres.
UPL's Zeba is a very absorbent, naturally derived, starch-based product that is fully biodegradable. Zeba increased the soil's water holding capacity and improved nutrient use efficiency in the crop's root zone with the in-furrow application.
