Amazon Retail announced launch of its agronomy services to empower farmers through an initiative that gives them timely advice and enables them to make accurate decisions on actions required for their crops, introduces machine learning technology for better produce and build a robust supply chain infrastructure.
Sameer Khetarpal, Director, Grocery, Food and Health, Amazon India said “This is a holistic program that enables farmers to use scientific crop planning based on soil and weather conditions, and provides inputs on crop and disease management.”
What it entails
Amazon Retail has built an ecosystem through a combination of agronomist-driven field interventions, and farm management tool to track the impact of interventions.
Each enrolled farmer partner is onboarded on the farm management tool to provide timely intervention that farmers need and value.
The team of qualified agronomists offer agritech expertise to registered farmer partners for better farm yield and improved product quality. Along with it, the agronomists provide a comprehensive scientific and precise advisory to the farmers.
The program includes proactive and reactive crop plans: Proactive crop plan is based on scientific crop and soil management practices and is aimed to get better yield and quality; Reactive crop plan is an intervention-based initiative where farmers can raise alerts on pests, diseases etc., and get remedial solutions for their farm problems.
Currently, 80 percent of farmers on-boarded with Amazon have access to a personalized Crop Plan on their mobile app with an ability to raise reactive crop-related queries and get resolution as and when needed.
The second offering of the Amazon Retail agronomy services is an application-interface through machine learning and computer-vision based algorithms that simplifies supply chain processes, helps farmers to identify defects (rotting, spots, cuts, mold) in fruits and vegetables, reduces wastage of produce, which in turn will help in ensuring that customers get the best quality of fruits and vegetables.
Amazon Retail is investing to leveraging state-of-art technology to build a robust temperature controlled supply chain infrastructure that reduces shrinkage and provides freshest quality to customers. It associates use technology to inspect and monitor quality at multiple stages once the produce is sourced from farmers and dispatched to the processing centers.
The fresh produce (fruits and vegetable) are then sorted, graded, and packed in different sizes at the processing centers and dispatched to Amazon Fresh fulfilment centers located closer to customers. The fulfilment centers operates with four separate temperature zones (Ambient, Tropical, Chilled and Frozen) to maintain the quality and freshness of produce.
Farmer's react
Darshan Daulat Khandagle, a farmer from Manjarwadi, MH who has used the agronomy service from Amazon Retail says, "I have been enrolled in the agronomy services from Amazon for cauliflower and have been getting regular visits from a qualified expert for guidance. I also get a growing plan in my app and can raise alerts whenever I notice something unusual in the farm. Last season the quality of the crop improved due to right actions at the right time helping me earn more."
