Inspiration
In the year 2016 I saw a news that Indian farmers are forced to sell their products(potato) at Rs. 100 per quintal(100 Kilos) and that's when I asked my mother about the local price of potato which came to be Rs. 30 for 1 Kg . That's when I began questioning the whole supply chain keeping in mind that no amount of economics can explain this Rs. 29 gap between the selling and cost price in times when 16000 farmers are committing suicides in India each year, tonnes of food getting wasted and people dying of hunger. Farmers in India receive only 25% of the actual value of the agri-commodity. By minimizing the most profit-consuming intermediary/processes that exist in the supply chain today, items can be mass-produced and made available to consumers. For example, farmers are hesitant to convert to organic farming nowadays due to the high cost and lack of market for their products. The current supply chain procedure is not uniform throughout India.In Indian Agriculture Sector , there has very less usage of innovation till date due to poor administration and management .
Using Blockchain Technology into this sector would help in scaling the business model to national level and bringing transparency. India is facing large no. of suicides by farmers(16,000/year)due financial stress and debt, the reason being poor supply chain management and storage facilities. The rural part is not connected to the urban one efficiently and extra intermediaries make the network worse .
The transportation and storage of food contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. When food is wasted, the emissions associated with its transportation and storage become unnecessary, further contributing to climate change. Reducing food wastage can help us to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change. which can be achieved through reducing food waste at the consumer level and improving supply chain efficiency
The idea is to create a ‘Farmer-Centric’ model aiming to uplift him/her to the better and giving control over the price , lessen the wastage , helping the households and decentralise the existing system of cold storage/silos to lessen the burden on government .
What it does
The project aims to increase the net profit of our farmers thus increasing the amount of money reaching the farmer by reducing intermediaries, reducing wastage and providing a bigger window for selling. My idea is about implementing Blockchain in Supply Chain Management for Agriculture . In my idea, I aim to connect the lower income farmers on a priority basis with the customers by creating a common ground between the two stakeholders in the supply chain of the commodities like potato , onions , tomato etc using blockchain technology and uses a smart contract to deliver the payment straight into the farmers account. With the current ecommerce ecosystem this is not possible as their is no empathy established with the seller which is utmost required today as we do not know we might be ignoring a seller selling the same product but is under tremendous debt and stress. The distribution of groceries be done such that priority is given to the sellers with lower income so as to give an equal opportunity. We can identify the amount of carbon emissions generated by our data storage activities on the Filecoin network. This will help us to determine how much offsetting we need to do. For the idea , in the first phase we would onboard the farmers and collect their data Taking into account their annual produce , type of crops, purchase cost, area of land, debts. Similarly in the next phase we would on boarding the Customers from the nearby city where the household needs to be surveyed as what type of rice, vegetable, fruits are mostly preferred, average price and the storage capacity Finally we would do the Data Analysis and create a personalized virtual corridor connecting right farmers to the right consumer where the Farmer knows the demands and price straight away from the end customer and not any middlemen. The On boarding of farmers can be started from those who are in a financial burden and those be served first where the banks can help in providing the data of those farmers whose loans have been pending and became a Non Performing Asset . The truck involved in the logistics would do the washing and sorting of the products on the move and being a part of the blockchain itself would analyse the data and deliver the product itself. The carbon footprints during the delivery can be monitored using the tools provided by Filecoin Green API to monitor the amount of carbon emissions generated by our data storage activities on the Filecoin network.
Using FileCoin into this sector would help in scaling the business model to global level and bring transparency.The idea is to create a ‘Farmer-Centric’ model aiming to uplift him/her to the better and giving control over the price , lessen the wastage , helping the households. Decentralisation of the existing system of cold storage/silos to lessen the burden on government is done by using the max storage capacity of the households to store the commodities.
How we built it
The project will be build by Integrating Filecoin Green into our Agritech project by connecting to the Filecoin Green API, which will allow us to monitor and offset the carbon footprint of our data storage activities on the Filecoin network. . We would use the Filecoin Green API to purchase carbon offsets to offset the amount of carbon emissions generated by our data storage activities on the network to achieve carbon neutrality or carbon negativity for our organization.The Filecoin Green API would be used to generate reports on our carbon footprint and offsetting activities to demonstrate our commitment to sustainability . upon blockchain technology and aims to create smart contracts for each farmer and consumer for transactions that happen so that the payment reaches without any failure. The app has been build on OutSystems Platform . Once the smart contract is deployed to the Filecoin Virtual Machine, the farmer and customer can use it to interact with each other and compute over the stored data. The smart contract will execute on the Filecoin Virtual Machine, using the stored data as input. The output of the computation can then be returned to the farmer and customer, as defined in the terms of the agreement.
Challenges we ran into
One of the primary challenges which I faced was in understanding the complex ground reality of the current scanario and then integrating the technical stack to solve the problem. Agriculture is a complex field that involves various factors like weather patterns, crop yield, market demand, and other parameters that can be challenging to collect, process, and analyze.
What we learned
We learned about the present scenario and the attention it needs from the youth.We also learned about the problems and issues faced by farmers not only in India but globally , especially in the United States. This idea has potential to increase net profits of farmers and this would create a domino effect in the economy as increased profits for the farmers means increased purchasing power.The suicides are increasing and if the idea can save even one percent of the lives which could have been ended,it would create a large impact for the society we live in.The objective is thus,to create world where resources are handed over from the right people to the right people and not wasted due to malpractices and poor management.Farmers getting an increase in their net profit would create a domino effect as heshe would use that money in uplifting the quality of life heshe is living in,use that money on their childrens education ,buy better tools,increase production and create a Self Sustaining World.
What's next for Blockchain Based De-Fi and DBT in Agriculture Supply Chain
To implement the idea in next few years on ground and connect with the right people .The platform would be made sustainable by making it free to the farmers for the First Five Year and then giving the power and option to either keep using the platform or pay per usage. This would apply only for the farmers not in debt and financially stable farmers. The first year would be all about educating the farmers , the consumers and on boarding them onto the platform .The data analysis would be done in the first year. The 2nd Year would be the year when the transactions can start taking place at the platform since the supply chain would be active and logistics being carried from the farmers to the households.The price of the vegetable/fruits would be determined by the marketplace price minus the cost incurred in transporting which when reaching the farmer would still be a good amount while the consumers would end up paying less price according to the quantity of the product. The operating cost would thus be sustainable by using the supply chain’s money only given by the consumer.Our core technology would be Blockchain as for such architecture Blockchain Technology would help in carrying the transactions with the use of ‘Smart Contracts ’ and the whole network of different stakeholders would be robust on this platform thus providing scalability which is utmost required here due to a large population. For,Direct Benefit Transfer using Blockchain we propose an end-to-end blockchain-based infrastructure to record disbursement of subsidy for each enrolled beneficiary.I have tried to build a sentimental value through the various options like checking the Farmer Financials as in this model we want to make the buyers believe that they are helping the farmers and they can keep a track of what changes are coming in their lives .There is a "Hearts"count button on the farmers app where he can get to know what his buyers are liking his harvested product.There is chat option also available where people can talk to the farmers and know their whereabouts which clearly is lacking nowadays but is important as someone is toiling hard to bring in the sun all year and I believe that the culture can change a lot when we connect the people .The gas fees and other resources incurred will not be deducted straightaway from the payment recieved from the customer but be taken from the farmer after a certain level of finacial state has been achieved by him.Till then , no money be taken. The trucks be equipped with apps and be made part of supply chain in contributing manner
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