Natural Extracts Industries Ltd

For example, the software solutions directly interact with the farmers and capture data at the touch points of smallholder farmers such as farmer profiling, distributing agricultural inputs, advisory services and procurement. However, there is a catch. In the case of NEI, the farmers don’t take to cultivating vanilla and getting enrolled by default. They go through a few rounds of screening and eligibility assessment. At first is a sensitisation stage, where NEI explains the details and processes of vanilla farming. Even at this stage, the farm and farmer details are captured digitally through SourceTrace software. The NEI staff then makes a field visit to assess if they meet all the required conditions to grow vanilla and their commitment level to the program. Only the farmers who clear this process will get to the registration stage. When the eligible farmer is finally enrolled, all information related to the farm and farmer is captured, including crop details and geo-reference of the farm. When this data is uploaded to the system, it is possible to get the complete details of the farmer along with its photographs and the exact area of production. This enables the field staff to make timely visits to update crop information and estimated yield in order to get accurate data of the enrolled farmer.

A key aspect of the transaction between NEI and the enrolled farmers is that the vine cuttings, provided by NEI to the farmer, are subsidized. For every vine cutting that the farmer purchases from NEI, he gets 4 vine cutting complementary. These transactions are effectively managed using SourceTrace’s solution. The entire process can be monitored and controlled to view real time data at any point of time. SourceTrace solution also effectively manages several other operations like procurement and field monitoring. Pest and diseases too can be identified, following which the farmer receives advisory on its management from agronomists. Lastly, there is also a training module, which facilitates the creation and scheduling of various training programs for farmers groups.

The training is defined by topic, criteria, target group, training methods and calendar schedule. The entire programme details can be downloaded into the mobile phones of the field staff. It helps them simply follow the programme schedule, conduct the training and capture details of farmer groups who have attended. This includes four compulsory training modules as well as an optional one.

Coming up from NEI’s end is a qualitative, behavioural research study, the findings of which will be compared with the data captured by SourceTrace. The result of this comparative analysis is expected by mid 2020, and will help identify indicators of farmer success.