Field Report Technology on the Farm By Vijaya Sunder M & Siddhartha Modukuri Stanford Social Innovation Review Spring 2023 Copyright Ó 2023 by Leland Stanford Jr. University All Rights Reserved Stanford Social Innovation Review www.ssir.org Email: editor@ssir.org Stanford Social Innovation Review / Spring 2023 15 A farmer examines a weather monitor at the Outgrow Agricultural Research Station PHOTO COURTESY OF WAYCOOL FOODS AND PRODUCTS PVT. LTD. Technology on the Farm Outgrow combines digital technologies and India’s ancient agricultural wisdom to support small-scale farmers. BY VIJAYA SUNDER M & SIDDHARTHA MODUKURI W hen Raghunath Reddy walked into his three-acre farmland in South India last January to per- form the rituals on Sankranti, an Indian festival that signifies the arrival of spring and the beginning of the harvest season, he was elated to see the lush green harvest of the last season waiting to be reaped. He was accompanied by his two cows, whom he calls his extended family. These rituals involved salutation to water, soil, and the sun—the fundamental ingre- dients of agriculture. While sunlight is abundant in the trop- ical Indian climates, water scarcity and soil depletion have challenged Indian farm- ers. A few years ago, Reddy’s land was in a pitiful state, with a poor-quality harvest. He tried every solution available from his local market—chemical fertilizers, seeds, and pesticides—as well as market deal- ers’ recommendations about which crops to cultivate. When the ancestrally owned land was given to him by his father in the early 2000s, it produced high yields with a quick turnaround. Though he made money through market fluctuations, his expendi- tures steadily increased. He had to ex- tract as much as he could from his land; otherwise, he had to take informal loans at high-interest rates. Late 2019 was the first time Reddy noticed that the soil had lost its capability to yield, no matter how much fertilizer he used. In 2020, the Reserve Bank of India re- ported that the high-yield effects of the Green Revolution—a 1960s movement that advocated the use of high-yield seeds, chem- ical fertilizers, pesticides, and mechanized farm tools—were fading. Excessive chem- ical use was causing damage to crops, con- sumers, and the environment alike. The movement also took a horrific human toll: More than 17,000 farmers committed sui- cide between 2018 and 2020, according to a 2020 government report. Fortunately, Reddy was approached by Outgrow in early 2020. Founded by social entrepreneur Karthik Jayaraman in 2019, Outgrow aims to educate and empower farmers with the relevant knowledge and necessary technologies to help them boost and sustain their production. “My father always told me that our forefathers had more sustainable farming methods,” Reddy says. “I always wanted to explore them but had no clear guidance.” That changed when Outgrow informed him about their “all-natural approach.” When team Outgrow first conducted a soil test using their portable apparatus, his farm’s soil organic matter (SOM) level was about 0.7 percent—shockingly low. Further deple- tion could result in the desertification of the land, with soil permanently losing its ability to grow crops. “Indian soil had SOM anywhere between 3 percent to 3.5 percent, but as we exploited [the soil] with chemicals, it lost its organic content,” says Sendhil Kumar, who heads the farmer engagement at Outgrow. “Hence, we prescribe age-old practices like integrative farming, which can regenerate lost soils.” Under these practices, farmers integrate livestock into their farmlands to help with soil health and crop generation. Backward Integration In 2015, Jayaraman cofounded Outgrow’s parent company, WayCool Foods, as a “farm to fork” model connecting farmers to mar- kets. At WayCool, the produce bought from farmers is delivered to urban retailers with a modest margin. The company has since become the fastest-growing agricultural commerce company in India, with a supply chain engineered with advanced technolo- gies, including robotic process automation, the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, and mobile geotagging. Since business hinged on farmers’ pro- ductivity, WayCool had to address yield uncertainty and quality concerns from farm- ers. So Jayaraman reimagined the business model as “soil to sale” by extending the sup- ply chain backward to cultivation, farmer welfare, and crop harvesting. He launched Outgrow in 2019 as a subsidiary, which of- fers farmer-engagement programs. That year, it helped 60 farmers by connecting them to agronomists. In the same launch year, Outgrow purchased 4 acres of land and launched Outgrow Agricultural Research Station (OARS), where agronomists experi- ment with traditional agricultural practices in collaboration with a team of data scien- tists to deliver technology-driven solutions to improve farmers’ yield. In 2020, the Outgrow team also created a mobile application for farmers, to give them a common platform to access agricultural research on cultivation practices by estab- lished organizations like the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and Indian Agri- cultural Research Institute. The mobile app 16 Stanford S o cial Innovation R eview / Spring 2023 VIJAYA SUNDER M is an award-winning author whose writing has appeared in California Management Review , Asian Management Insights , and Harvard Business Publish- ing, among other publications. He is an assistant professor of practice at the Indian School of Business. SIDDHARTHA MODUKURI is a Hyderabad-based research associate with the Indian School of Business. allows farmers to get advice about crop culti- vation and look up the latest farmers’ market prices. And it integrates the information gath - ered by OARS with in-house portable soil- testing kits, microclimate prediction sensors, and crop-growth monitoring sensors—the insights from which are translated into local dialects and presented with infographics and videos for the farmers. Jayaraman envisions the application as a mobile agronomist that helps farmers generate steady revenues by providing accurate and reliable information. Outgrow reached 200,000 mobile downloads at the start of 2022. Initially, Outgrow proposed diversifica- tion of the crops on the same land—called multicultivation—to replace the existing mono-cultivation practice of growing a single crop on the entire landholding. Depending on market demand, farmers grew a single crop and were prone to losses when those crops failed to yield. Harish, a farmer in the Indian state of Karnataka, says Outgrow converted him to diversification. “I was advised to plant both carrots and beans in a particular pat- tern. Now, I have seen that even if one crop fails, I can rely on another,” he says. However, not all crop combinations can reap the same results, so Outgrow’s agronomists educated farmers on the combination of crops and crop patterns that would bring promising and consistent yield. Another ancient practice that helped re- juvenate soil was integrative farming. OARS found that practicing integrative farming resulted in a cost reduction of 60 to 70 percent on fertilizers. Reddy first adopted this practice and found significant results within a year. “With integrative farming, nothing goes to waste and it’s economically viable,” he says. “Agricultural waste feeds the cattle, cattle waste feeds the soil. And having cattle can fetch extra income with their milk and associated products.” The soil-test report in January 2022 showed that the SOM content of his land more than doubled to 1.8 percent. Solar-powered micro-weather stations designed by OARS capture soil temperature, water precipitation, and evaporation rate, as well as making climate predictions. These data can determine the exact water require- ment of the soil. Ramanatha Shenoy, head of Outgrow’s agronomist team, points out that knowing the right amount of water for irrigation can reduce water consumption by 90 percent, compared with techniques like flood irrigation. OARS also recommends the ancient practice of the Matti Dhara method —a technique of using clay pot pitchers for irrigation—which reduces water consump- tion by up to 40 percent. Inclusive Value Chain WayCool’s soil-to-sale model is more holistic than the existing agriculture outreach mod- els in India. On the one hand, while several organizations strive to offer farming solu- tions, they are fragmented in their offerings. For instance, a few firms offer seed quality and manure recommendations to farmers, while a few others facilitate harvest and distribution logistics. Consequently, farmers get exploited by too many intermediaries across the agricultural supply chain. On the other hand, many retailers who buy crops from the farmers and use digital technologies like cloud logistics to deliver their products and other services to their customers for commercial benefits do not focus on farmers’ well-being and sustain- able agricultural practices. Thus, on both the supply and demand sides of the agricul- tural value chain, farmers are exploited and incur financial loss. In contrast, Outgrow’s soil-to-sale model leverages digital technologies to offer an in- clusive value chain to the farmers. Through Outgrow’s mobile application, farmers can access information like demand estimates, market selling prices, and good practice suggestions related to seed quality and manure. Their IoT-based sensors enable real-time quality monitoring of farm re- sources, environment, and crops that help reduce yield uncertainty. Further, AI-based image processing helps farmers to detect crop diseases and take timely measures to prevent losses. WayCool facilitates both inbound and outbound logistics to ensure that farmers do not have to deal with inter- mediaries so that they can focus on produ- cing quality products. “The farmers with Outgrow are now better informed and thereby have increased their income by 30 to 40 percent,” Jayaraman says. “We have seen a rise in demand for our high-quality food products from the custom- ers, resulting in a bottom-line increase in revenues. This motivated us to adopt social impact as a culture for the entire agricultural supply chain and beyond.” Outgrow has encountered challenges along the way. Many farmers who were unfamiliar with new technologies were skep- tical of Outgrow’s digital-technology-based agricultural practices. To address this con- cern, Outgrow selected a few farmers who worked with them and learned the benefits of sustainable farming methods. The en- terprise then appointed them as “Certified Outgrow Crop Advisors.” These farmers testified to the positive effects of its meth- ods and recommended the same to other reluctant farmers. Outgrow initially struggled to reach a large scale of farmers with a one-size-fits-all approach because of cultural and regional diversity, including language barriers. So, they customized their informational and advisory content as infographics and videos based on dialects and cultural nuances. For small-scale farmers who could not afford technologies like sensors or weather sta- tions, Outgrow offered free advisory services and information. The farmers could use this information to grow a crop and later invest in Outgrow’s technology by converting profits from the harvest. Looking forward, Outgrow is taking steps to include more farmers in its work. It seeks to reach more than 90 million farmers in the country by the end of 2023. “We believe that by blending technology adoption with ancient Indian agricultural practices that we can curb the social issues related to agriculture that include farmer suicides and food wastage,” Jayaraman says. “This belief paves the way to all our future endeavors.” n