Cultyvate

April 15 2021 Call Notes

• Cultyvate tracks moisture levels and delivers farmers real-time info on crop water requirements that account for agro-climatic variable (seed variety, soil moisture, weather)

• Multi-point soil moisture sensor which measures - depletion rate, water filling rate, etc.

• Two types of systems

  • For higher value horticulture crops, sensors are connected with pumps that turn on and off automatically

  • For paddy and maize, send farmers alerts on when and for how long they need to irrigate and they do this manually 

• In some cases farmers filling upto 12cm when recommendation is 5cm, this is an excess use 1 lakh meters of water per acre

• Also important to factor in emissions from energy use associated with using tubewells; can reduce this by 40%

• Pricing (for 1000 farmers and 5 year commitment): 6-7k per sensor. Subscription of 18% of initial cost annually (13,300 TCO). 

  • One sensor needed for every 5 acres

  • Claim that payback period is one year based on yield increase and reduction in pesticide. 

  • Too early to see evidence of buyers paying a premium for climate smart rice but working on this (see below) 

  • Evaluating carbon offsets as a way to reduce cost

  • Interested in water credits but expect this will take at least another 5 years

• While initial focus has been irrigation, now doing projects w Olam and Nestle which focus on measuring reduction in carbon emissions, methane and eventually nitrous oxide (still developing sensors for this).

  • Data being captured in this project aligns with the SRP performance indicators 

  • One model they are pursuing is sales to corporates who install across their own farmer base. In this case, the data is retained by the corporate otherwise data belongs to farmer 

• Key challenges

  • Cost

  • Behavioral: Farmers are nervous about changing practices and taking recommendations bc crop is at risk

  • Gaps in electricity availability; farmers can’t pump when they receive an advisory 

  • Pumps broken down

  • Farmers flood to kill rodents and then resume AWD

• This kharif will reach 8000 hectares and 3500 farmers

  • Last year worked with a couple hundred farmers in Punjab (see here) 

  • Active in Punjab, AP, Karnataka. Scoping projects in UP and Haryana 

• Launched an IVR service to reinforce the advisories

  • Exception management in place; if a farmer doesn’t start irrigation after 3 IVR calls, a supervisor calls them to figure out the issue

  • Achieved 80% adherence to IVR 

• Project w tobacco farmers w ITC in AP. saved 67% of water, reduce chloride level by 0.2%, income increase of 44k rupees per hectare per year for farmer