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The world with its diverse industries and people is evolving at a pace faster than ever before. Each new dawn is a reason to celebrate another phenomenal innovation, especially those that incorporate the unique applications of technology to solve world problems. To this effect, Cropin’s leading-edge agri-tech solutions have been breaking new ground in the field of agriculture globally.
Cropin’s modernistic, tech-enabled approach to the various processes involved in the production and distribution of food products has enabled agri-focussed organizations including farming companies, seed, and other agri-input manufacturers, fruit and vegetable exporters, commodity traders, governments, development aid agencies, and CSR arms of private sector organizations.
Read on to know how we help agribusinesses drive initiatives around:
SUSTAINABILITY
Agriculture is one of the critical sectors that demand quality natural resources for its sustenance. The ever-increasing population demands an increase in crop production, while the availability of ecological resources diminishes day by day. Thus, agribusinesses are facing a slew of challenges that significantly impacts their agricultural productivity.
Cropin’s future-proof agri-tech solutions are reinventing how stakeholders in the ecosystem produce, process, and provide food to billions of people worldwide. Cropin’s innovative use of cutting-edge technologies encourages food producers to adopt farming practices that are kind to the environment and allow for more sustainable production of crops.
Cropin enables farming communities to:
- Define, monitor, and adopt the best package of practices
- Maximize the per-acre value with optimum use of agrochemicals
- Adopt climate-smart agriculture for increased agricultural productivity
- Empower farmers with a more modern and scientific approach to farming
- Increase visibility over the supply chain for enhanced demand management
- Build an interconnected network of stakeholders for efficiency and transparency
Ensuring Sustainable Cultivation Of Ghanian Cocoa With Cropin’s AI-Powered Technology
Ghana is the world’s second-largest cocoa grower and producer of about 20% of the world’s cocoa. However, is riddled with challenges that negatively impact agricultural productivity.
- Cocoa is predominantly produced on small- or medium-sized farms and depends heavily on manual labor.
- Being a delicate crop, cacao trees are easily affected by changes in weather and are highly susceptible to diseases and pests.
- The fruit-bearing pods don’t all ripen at the same time, and hence these trees demand close monitoring throughout the year.
- Cocoa cultivation is extremely labor-intensive, as caring for and harvesting the beans requires close, continuous monitoring and involves many hazardous tasks.
Cropin’s recent strategic partnership with Rainforest Alliance is a remarkable step toward co-developing and perfecting ‘CocoaSense’, a future-ready farming solution that will leverage AI and satellite imagery to facilitate cocoa farmers in the management and monitoring of crops in a more accurate, affordable, and scalable manner.
The vision for CocoaSense is to bring about an integrated offering that starts with structured data aggregation and finishes with predictive and prescriptive intelligence that is delivered to the individual growers (agronomy advisory) and to the different organizations invested in setting them up for success.
Building the cocoa-specific remote-sensing data product on Cropin’s existing platform interface is what makes it possible to solve the complexities associated with smallholder livelihoods in a lean manner. Through this collaboration, Cropin will impact every bite of chocolate and other related products made of cocoa sourced from farms in Ghana and the surrounding regions. Cropin also intends to support SAT4Farming‘s underlying objective to triple the average yields of Ghanaian cocoa farmers’ to 1500 kg per year through innovations in farming.
In the long run, Cropin endeavors to bring about a sustainable production of cocoa that is free of child labor globally. This can be strengthened further by introducing traceability in the supply chain and fetching a premium for responsibly-produced cocoa.
PREDICTABILITY
The agri-food sector has been and continues to be sensitive to changes in the diverse factors that impact agricultural productivity for better or worse. To such effect, forecasting the yield for a season or predicting the availability of food ingredients to match the consumer demand has been reduced to a game of calculated risks.
Cropin’s predictive solution for food producers, processors, traders, and agri-input companies leverages the potent combination of historical data, scientific analysis of current trends, and a near-accurate forecast of what the future has in store for the agroecosystem to create tremendous value for agri-focussed organizations worldwide.
The SmartRisk platform is built on a powerful agri-AI engine with proprietary algorithms that enables accurate crop detection, acreage estimation, crop stage and health analysis, and yield forecast. Using this modern agriculture platform, key players in the agri-food value chain are thus able to arrive at sound, data-driven decisions that enhance agricultural productivity by mitigating risks during crop cultivation cycle, facilitate smarter and efficient sourcing and procurement, and achieve more than ever before.
Cropin digitizes every link in the supply chain to create a traceable footprint and a predictable path ahead, thus empowering stakeholders to have their finger on the pulse of a crop’s production and distribution systems.
Experience the power of a world-class deep learning system to:
- Enhance agricultural productivity by mitigating risks during the crop cultivation cycle
- Arrive at data-driven decisions based on historical, current, and predictive agri data
- Identify crops, estimate acreage, analyze crop stage and health, and forecast yield in advance using AI and satellite imagery for smart and efficient sourcing and procurement decisions
- Determine the regional and plot-level water stress to improve soil and water management for increased crop yields and to channel the salesforce to upsell/cross-sell other products
- Understand crop patterns and agro-climatic zones for efficient sales and distributions of agri-input and avoid loss due to oversupply/unavailability
Leveraging Remote Sensing To Predict Crop Health And Forecast Yield
One of the world’s largest beverage companies made a public commitment to source 60% of its raw materials from the African region. The company was particular about the quality and the quantity of sorghum, barley, and other ingredients required for its final product. They wanted to leverage technology to mitigate risks relating to raw material availability in their value chains and empower their local sourcing teams with a procurement toolkit so that they could better plan their purchasing targets.
In its successful pilot project with Cropin, the company leveraged SmartRisk, Cropin’s AI-led predictive solution, to map six Nigerian states and identify sorghum growing areas in relation to the hectarage planted, the health of the crop, and a predicted yield.
SmartRisk also analyzed the crops’ historical performance in the last three years to understand the sorghum planting and yield trends, which facilitated better sourcing decisions for the company.
Cropin’s crop modeling methodology was tailored to the local complexities in Nigeria — small plots, heavy inter-cropping, and cloud cover. The deep-learning engine with interactive, user-friendly interfaces established the performance of every pixel at a district and state level — both historical and present — to deliver insights at a fraction of the traditional cost and effort, helping key stakeholders hedge risks and take informed business decisions.
TRACEABILITY
The world today is a smaller place, thanks to technology. Our global pantry has not just enabled consumers to get a taste of cuisines from around the world but has also made them more conscious of what originates from where. Food producers are now obligated to provide them with the information they need, to ensure that their food qualifies as hygienic and safe to consume.
Quality control certifications and export regulations are the norms for international traders. While adhering to the many requirements is as challenging for farming companies as is implementing them in the first place, there aren’t many tech-enabled modern agriculture solutions that will help agribusinesses achieve all of the above cost-effectively.
Cropin presents its best-in-class agri-tech platform that empowers agri-producers, processors, and distributors to address two main challenges in catering to consumers: adherence to the set standards during the entire crop production cycle, and maintaining transparency to earn and retain the end consumer’s trust.
While keeping every step of the agribusiness supply chain transparent addresses the former challenge, food products with labels stating comprehensive information about the movement of the product along the supply chain help build consumer confidence.
Cropin's traceability feature enables agribusinesses to:
- Monitor crop production and harvest to ensure adherence to best farm practices
- Increase supply chain efficiency by interconnecting key stakeholders on a centralized platform
- Build brand reputation and credibility for brands that transact across borders
- Achieve logistics traceability, particularly at a time of crisis, without having to lose too much
- Comply with international export and/or organic certifications and ensure fair trade and social compliance
Empowering One Of Asia’s Prominent Exporters Of Grapes With Cropin’s Traceability
A farmer-producer company in Asia that exported grapes and other fruits and vegetables faced the challenge of meeting the strict requirements on traceability, compliance, and quality control set by exporters for Europe. This is where they turned to technology for a solution and decided to partner with Cropin.
Cropin’s farm management solutions SmartFarm and SmartWare helped the organization capture data and visuals at all levels of production, from pre-sowing to shipping. SmartFarm is Cropin’s flagship smart farming solution that captures crop data straight from the fields, whereas SmartWare is a digital packhouse solution that enables farm-to-fork traceability, quality control, and compliance with international trade regulations.
Being a cloud-based platform, Cropin allows key players within the agribusinesses to view farm and supply-chain activities in real time and derive actionable insights that encourage efficient and dynamic business operations. The Web- and mobile-based applications digitize every activity that goes into producing and distributing the agri-produce, thereby bringing about transparency and accountability in the entire process.
While SmartFarm helps agribusinesses achieve higher farm productivity, SmartWare ensures minimal wastage during the produce’s movement along the supply chain.
Today the organization has expanded immensely and is selling fruits and vegetables to countries around the world. Read more about how Cropin's solutions digitally transformed the farmer-producer company's day-to-day operations here.
These three pillars play key roles in ensuring food security for the current and future generations around the world. The availability of quality and nutritious food for people is fundamental to the health and prosperity of the people who strive to make the world go round. Cropin endeavors to bring about a revolution in the way stakeholders in the modern agriculture ecosystem perceive and address the challenges around these initiatives to build a better world together.
