The tiny village of Chinthapally of Khammam district, Telangana, has 21 farmers cultivating chillies over 40 acres. It is one of the largest chilli growing areas in India.

An impressive 55,000 acres (22,250 hectares) accounted for over 40% of cultivable lands in the state in 2018. Despite hosting a comparatively large number of progressive farmers, the challenges around farming are plenty. Chilli farmers have traditionally been growing low-yielding varieties using unscientific techniques, with limited availability of quality and timely inputs, while being exposed to a variety of risks.

Samunnati believes that a successful integration of precision farming, insurance, yield prediction and market linkages can be enabled by adopting technology in agriculture. This approach leads to efficient crop management, drop in input costs, de-risked farming and effective market linkage aided by traceability.

One such example of end to end tech-driven agricultural project management is shared here:

Summary

Projects Contract Farming of Chilli
Location Khammam | Telangana
Farmers | Villages | Acreage 267 | 52 | 605
Corp | Variety Red Chilli | MAHYCO Tejaswini
Session August 2019 to January 2020
Cultivation economics Rs 86,441/acre
Risk Mitigation Crop Insurance @5.31% of value assured

Stakeholder | Roles

Stakeholder Roles
An MNC with integrated farming solution Contract Farming Market Linkage of produce
A third Agtech marketplace & farming solution Input Supply Package of practices
The Precision farming cum insurance facilitation Precision Farming Solution Crop insurance Facilitation
Contract Farmers Red Chilli Cultivation

Value Chain Finance | Inclusive Approach

  • Chilli farmers traditionally have been growing low-yielding varieties, exposed to a variety of risks, selling the crop to local traders – often at a discount, while having highly limited access to institutional finance.
  • An MNC with integrated farming solution brings its rich international experience of contract farming, fortified by precision farming dashboard extended by WRMS. Digitising functions like farmer onboarding, data collection and monitoring, it provides immense support to the traditional cropping activities.
  • A third Agtech marketplace extends the scientific package of practices coupled with the ability to supply timely quality inputs in the required quantity.
  • The integrated farming solution offers two crucial propositions: precision farming dashboards with near real-time monitoring of farms strengthened by end-to-end crop insurance management. This helps mitigate cultivation risks and give visibility to the activity.
  • Offering customised financial products, Samunnati extends timely credit to the farmers. Using available farmer data, pre-sanction eligibility is calculated on the dashboard. Real-time monitoring and crop insurance also provide risk mitigation abilities to the credit team. An assured buy-back arrangement by an MNC with integrated farming solution adds to the value-chain based funding principle.
  • Samunnati hopes to replicate the structure across geographies and thereby gradually changing the perception of agriculture being a highly risk-prone business.