Blooom

The key problems that are withholding the growth of smallholder farmers -- and often, that are endangering the sustainability of our food system: lack of smallholder awareness of better crop (mix) choices and sustainable, high yield farming practices; lack of access to high quality inputs, credit; vulnerability to climate change; but importantly, a mismatch between buyers’ requirements and smallholders’ capabilities in terms of delivering quantity, quality, and consistency.

This cogwheel of problems drive smallholders away from farming.

The heart of our offering is Real-Time Advice. This service provides comprehensive, completely customised support for each farm throughout the growth cycle by combining data on individual farms with agronomic data on sustainable practices, local availability of seeds and sustainable inputs, weather patterns, and soil data.

Together, these factors enable algorithmic customisation of decisions that is customised for each farmer and farm and at scale provide avenues of better decision-making for farmers.

According to the 2011 Census of India, out over 167 million rural households, approx. 90 million are engaged in farming. The average farming family has five members, thereby nearly 450 million people are directly dependent on farming. 

According to a survey carried out by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development ~87% of farming families work landholdings that are smaller than 2ha, 67% less than 1ha, and 37% less than 0.4ha.

In the “State of Indian Farmers” report, 70% of respondents said, “their crops were destroyed because of unseasonal rains, droughts, floods and pest attack.” Climate change affects the tropics the most immediately and severely, and the groups that are already the most vulnerable are the ones that are the most exposed to it – especially farmers, who are directly dependent on the weather. 

The problem we are trying to solve here involves assisting 10 Million smallholder farmers to transition into more risk-mitigated and sustainable farming methods by 2030. 

We are trying to solve the problem that affects 67% of the India's farming population and 50% of the global farming population, where shrinking land and changing climate pose uncertainty for farmers' livelihood and income.

Blooom is a fully integrated, soil-to-shelf platform for sustainable food supply chains. On the surface, Blooom is an elegantly simple, lightweight smartphone app — at its core, it is a series of algorithms on the cutting edge of agricultural technology, powered by the cloud. The innovation rests on three pillars: (1) Blooom, our fully integrated, soil-to-shelf tech platform, (2) our last-mile enterprise delivery network, and (3) our ecosystem integrator approach.  

Soil-to-Shelf - This service provides comprehensive, completely customized support for each farm throughout the growth cycle by combining data on individual farms with agronomic data on sustainable practices, local availability of seeds and sustainable inputs, weather patterns, and soil data.

Last-mile Network - The app is used by farmers with a smartphone and by farmer influencers [titled Blooom Entrepreneurs (BE)] for farmers without a smartphone. The BE serve as the channel partner for aggregated farmers to receive advisory, pick-up inputs and sell their produce.

Ecosystem Integration - Blooom offers a two-sided Marketplace allowing Input Companies and Buyers to undertake; Farmer/BE Discovery, Price Discovery, Crop Discovery, Transactions, Online Payments, Order Management, Inventory Management, and Logistics Integration.

We distinguish between several categories of users, which include farmers, facilitators who manage farmer portfolios, and institutions who manage entire farmer networks.

An average farmer benefitting from Blooom, with an average age of 42 has an landholding of 0.4-0.5 Hectares and typically grows 2-3 crops a year. We identify these farmers and connect them with Farmer Influencers/facilitators/BE, who use Blooom to capture farm, soil, crop data, thus building a profile of the farmer. 

We use this data to build a risk profile of the farmer and then recommend the farmer to adopt the risk mitigation strategy, which starts with the subscription of Smart Farming solution. For an upfront nominal fee of US$ 8, the farmer gets access to the suite of best fit, best practice solutions. The farmer can get advice, purchase inputs and If needed, Blooom can also provide access to commodity markets directly through the app, where farmers can list their produce ahead of the harvest, which in our experience leads to better price realisation.

We have a dedicated Customer Experience unit, which collects feedback about farmer experience and monitors compliance to transactions, which allows us to assess quality of service.

The problem is underpinned by the very complex nature of farming, where multiple variables beneath and above the soil determine growth and productivity of the crop. Today, this problem stands exacerbated due to Climate Change, exposing the farmer to high risk. 

The challenge is in mitigating risks for the farmer through a holistic solution. The solution keeps the farmer at the nucleus and the surrounding orbitals as the network of Farmer Influencers, Input Companies, Credit Institutions, Buyers. Each stakeholder interacts with the nucleus by the virtue of data-driven recommendations.

Thus, this is well-aligned with the core dimension. 

There are no conflicting initiatives in the countries and the Indian states where we are present or where we are planning to scale, only other agricultural ventures working towards similar ends. There has been a boom in AgTech investment in recent years yet based on our analysis of the over 100 most important agricultural startups around the world identified by a widely used assessment from CBInsights, no other companies provide the same offering. Most startups focus on a narrow segment, such as farm management, data analytics, farming and input advice, market access or innovative hardware. Crucially, only a small minority provide solutions specifically for smallholders. Comprehensive and integrated solutions are rare.

Our solution is unique in our capacity to customise farmer advice based on a combination of the characteristics and variables affecting a farming lifecycle. Our closest competitor in India would be DeHaat, AgroStar, CropIn, which offers a similarly broad solution set, but they have yet to bring them together into a single, integrated platform. E.g. DeHaat is a traditional eCommerce connecting farmers and markets, AgroStar is an Input Aggregator and CropIn provides SaaS to agribusinesses. The most similar mix of services is offered by Tulaa in Kenya, however, their smart farming component as well as the services that they are able to deliver to their partners appear to be more limited, and they do not incorporate a last mile network (field facilitators) into their model.

The goal of Blooom is to increase crop productivity and sustainability, while derisking and reducing the cost of cultivation. It enables previously disconnected smallholder farmers to access a market of vetted, high quality seeds and other agricultural inputs at discounted prices. Complemented by an inexpensive soil testing solution, a dynamic, highly context-sensitive smart farming engine provides advice on what, when and how to plant, nurture, and protect from disease, and through recurring use builds the ability to give farmers an RoI forecast for each crop. The platform emphasises use of sustainable inputs and practices that are proven to preserve soil health and minimize the toll that agriculture takes on natural resources. It also increases farmers’ climate resilience by recommending resilient seed varieties and crop mixes and warns them to implement changes in their field practices ahead of extreme weather events and crop diseases. Blooom creates a profile for each farmer, capturing basic data points including land maps, as well as social data such as family size. It then tracks the use of inputs and crop protection as well as the amount and the price of the produce sold through the platform.

We are working with Microsoft (having been invited into their Accelerator program) to enhance the inclusiveness of our platform with speech recognition and AI. We have also entered into a partnership with Earth Analytics India/SARMAP, who provide satellite imaging for crop monitoring, further expanding the capabilities of our smart farming engine and enhancing the accuracy of Real Time Advice.

Since our go-to market in July 2019, we have acquired and signed-up 196 Blooom Entrepreneurs [BE] across the State of Odisha in India. BE User persona is that of an individual with a social network of smallholder farmers. They work with 100-200 farmers only and in individual capacity could be a progressive farmers, an agro retailer, a Secretary of PACS, a CEO/MD of Farmer Cooperative or a youth who has good farmer contact and social network and high-risk taking ability, positive attitude for doing business.

a.     BE pays an Annual License Fee of US$ 65, to sign-up on Blooom;

b.     The oldest BE was appointed just over a year ago, and the newest BE was signed-up less than a week ago;

c.     An average BE increased their Income by 10% and recouped their return on investment on License Fee.

We have acquired 52,870 farmers, an average of 5,200 farmers every month. An average farmer has a landholding of 1 Acre and farms a mix of cereals, fruits and vegetables.

a.     We have engaged with ~10,000 farmers;

b.     Transacted with ~2,900 farmers;

c.     Sales Revenue of ~US$ 200,000;

d.     And 1,568 farmers have paid to use Blooom Smart Farming services;

e.     Thus, saving costs/increased revenue by 27%.

Citation - Impact of the eKutir ICT-enabled social enterprise and its distributed micro-entrepreneur strategy on fruit and vegetable consumption: A quasi-experimental study in rural and urban communities in Odisha, India. Food Policy, 90. https://doi-org.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2019.101787. https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/science/article/pii/S0306919219306098

We created Blooom to change the way markets work for the rural poor, leading to a set of outcomes that will have substantial impact on inclusion and poverty, food security and sustainability. By the end of 2023, our objective is to achieve the following, specific changes:

Increase in inclusion, and a reduction in poverty

Outcome objectives

10 million women and men are registered on the platform

735,000 women and men transact on the platform

30% year-on-year average income growth for all farmers

More farmers can access and use credit and insurance

New rural jobs are created for women and men as Blooom Entrepreneurs

We act as ecosystem integrators in the market. Our last mile enterprise network makes it easy for companies to transact with smallholders. Our platform aggregates smallholders’ demand and supply, and enables input suppliers to predict needs, and buyers to purchase ahead of time. These features create economies of scale.

Increase in food security

Outcome objectives:

The climate resilience of smallholder farms has improved

The general quality of smallholder produce has improvedMore healthy produce is available to urban consumers

Increase in sustainability

Outcome objectives

The climate resilience of smallholder farms has increased

The health of soils and local ecosystems has improved

CO2 emissions across the food supply chain have decreased, carbon sequestration on farms has increased

Smallholders’ use of sustainable inputs and best practices improve the climate resilience of their farms, as well as the health of their soils and their local ecosystems. This combined with increased efficiency along the food supply chain results in a significant reduction in CO2 emissions as well as an increase in their farms’ abilities to sequester carbon. About our general 

Monitoring & Evaluation process - We employ a lean data collection approach and integrate M&E data into the Impact Value chain Portfolio constructed under a license of the UN’s Business Call to Action Impact Lab dashboard and all Operational data is analysed & reported by Microsoft Power BI tool. M&E data and metrics are integrated into decision making, management, and communication with stakeholders.

Currently, cumulative Farmers registered 60,344 (till May 2020). Farmers are located across 15 Districts (64 Blocks) in the State of Odisha in India. By end-2020 we aim to reach to 200,000 Farmers in Odisha and additional States in India. By the end of 2021, we aim to acquire 500,000 Million registered smallholder farmers and by 2023, we aim to acquire ~2 Million farmers.

We project that the year-on-year growth in farmers engaged and transacting will be 10% allowing Blooom to have 50% of the total acquired farmers as meaningfully transacting and benefiting from the platform. 

This goal can be easily achieved within India, with a total addressable market size of 120 Million farmers. Additionally, we plan to expand in Kenya, Uganda, Angola and Latin America, which would help us in reaching our goal.

Our tech platform has already been deployed in several locations, and is currently being scaled to additional countries. To achieve impact on scale in a short timeframe, our primary approach for expanding to new localities is through partners which fit the following criteria; (i) They already manage large farmer networks; (ii) Respond to their needs and make their work more effective; (iii) They can allocate sufficient funds ; (iv) The have a good reputation among their farmers, and have a solid sustainability record.

Whether we enter into a new country independently or through a Scaling Partner, we follow the same four-staged process.

Screening – We assess the target area along the following metrics: agriculture profile, market profile, infrastructure, access to finance, regulatory environment, skillset of farmers potential for social impact, competition and the presence of platform enrichment partners. 

Scoping – We first localize and contextualize the platform, that is, we translate it to local languages and enrich it with region-specific agricultural information. Then we identify, screen and reach out to enrichment partners.

Planning – We establish a detailed plan of engagement and agreements with all stakeholders.

Operationalising – We identify and hire resources and deploy them in the country.

Refining – Based on data from the platform and direct feedback from partners, we keep refining the platform to better adapt to local needs.

Operational Risks

Lower capture rate of farmers’ pre-harvest transactions — Would result in lower revenue per farmer.

Lower capture rate of farmers’ post-harvest transactions — Would result in lower revenue per farmer.

Slower expansion in New Markets — Could result in higher operational expenditure per farmer and lower revenues.=

Poor management of farmer network — Would increase farmers’ and Blooom Entrepreneur’s churn rate and increase farmer’s acquisition and activation costs .

Poor partner ethics — So far we have succeeded in partnering with ethical value chain players that care about smallholder farmers and our food system’s sustainability. This may not remain the case.

Data Sharing & Privacy Risk — As we scale to different emerging markets, there is an inherent risk in data sharing and privacy.

External Risks

Climate change and extreme weather — Changes in climatic condition could severely impact the quality and quantity of farmers’ production, hence lowering post-harvest transaction value.

Price fluctuations of agricultural products — Could negatively impact post-harvest transaction value, and consequently decrease our revenue

Credit scarcity — Could affect farmers’ access to credit and working capital, and consequently their ability to transact on the platform

User Acquisition Barrier Risk - Our profitability hinges on a large number of transacting market players.

Lower Capture Rate of Transactions

1. For each crop / location, we determine weekly transaction value targets and closely monitor gaps
2. We closely monitor competitors’ pricing
3. We implement immediate tactical pricing decisions in coordination with input suppliers

Slower Expansion in New Markets

1. We determine expansion targets at relevant geographic levels, and formalize them in performance agreements with partners
2. Track acquisition rate and determine thresholds triggering action at elevating hierarchical levels

Poor management of Farmer Network

1. We track churn rate and we determined thresholds triggering action at elevating hierarchical levels
2. We train Blooom Entrepreneurs in farmer management
3. We link BE’s and our staff’s incentives to churn rate

Poor Partner Ethics

1. Our screening process ensures that we only partner with organisations who have a solid social and environmental sustainability record, and a good reputation among smallholder farmers.

Data Sharing

1. We have partnered with data scientists and legal counsel to help understand the best practices in data management, privacy, sharing, and monetizing data. We will work within the guidelines and regulatory requirements of each country to ensure that the data is used for the development of farmers and the local agricultural ecosystem.

Farmer Credit Scarcity

1. One of our key goals is to ensure that smallholders can access credit. We work towards this by assessing a comprehensive set of risks and providing farmers customised risk mitigation strategies, while we are working with a partner organisation to be able to establish Credit Scores for farmers in the near future based on the metadata on our platform

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Currently, we have 37 Full-time staff working with us and 4-6 Consultants in part-time capacity to assist us across key Units as seasoned experts in their respective domains, encompassing Digital Tech, Supply Chains, Agriculture Development, among others. 

Suvankar Mishra, CEO and Co-founder. In addition to Blooom, Suvankar serves as Executive Director of eKutir. He will lead Blooom’s strategic mission across the continents, steering the leadership of execution teams, and will represent to donors and impact investors.

Krishna Mishra, Executive Chairman and Co-founder. In addition to Blooom, Krishna is also the founder and chairman of the eKutir group of companies. He will lead fundraising and provide necessary guidance to operations teams for business expansion.

Raj Singh Bhandal, COO & Co-founder. Raj is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor with over 25 years of experience across the domains of marketing, operations, and finance & technology. He will lead strategic growth plans and manage special projects.

Market Development – Ensures that the product accurately responds to market needs, performs as intended, and is well received by customers. It ensures that the Product-Market-Customer fit is aligned and acts as a bridge between Business/Customers and Product & Engineering. It is headed by Surajit Sinha, a seasoned expert who has worked at market-leading multinationals, deploying AgTech solutions at scale in multiple countries.

Customer Experience – Ensures obsession of key customers – farmers and BE. This involves the continuous evaluation of user experience, and the planning and conducting of live and automated calls. The team is headed by Sudeer Singh, with two decades of experience, most recently as the head of Amazon India’s Customer Services, scaling the company’s core team from 60 to 6000 employees.

Channel Partners are Field Facilitators and Producing Units, the most indispensable partners in our model that enable the delivery of our services to farmers.

Platform Enrichment Partners are companies that provide high quality, sustainable inputs or agricultural services at price-points that are affordable for smallholder farmers.

Scaling Partners are organisations with large farmer networks in a new geographic area. 

Knowledge Partners are predominantly universities and research institutes, that may (1) supply us with region-specific agronomical information for sustainable best practices, (2) support us with Monitoring & Evaluation, or (3) help us disseminate our learnings to benefit public institutions and the wider development community. We are currently in partnership with the following institutions: CGIAR, IFPRI, ICRISAT, University of Bonn, University of Liverpool Management School, University of South Carolina, IIM Indore.

Turnkey Partners extend the capabilities of our smart farming platform. At present, we work with the following partners:

aWHERE/Custom Weather provides predictive microclimate data, enabling the platform to help farmers prepare and respond to weather events.

Earth Analytics provides spatial data, including satellite-based crop monitoring and remote sensing for digital soil maps. This helps us better understand what is happening on each farm, and enables the platform to provide farmers more dynamic, detailed advice with greater predictive power.

South Pole advises on carbon reduction and sequestration, audits our carbon reduction and sequestration record, and manages and trades the resulting carbon credits.

Blooom earns revenue primarily by selling its platform to a network of individual Farmer Influencers/BE and/or Farmer Cooperatives. 

1.  BE, User persona is that of an individual with a social network of smallholder farmers. It works with 100-200 farmers only, as the BE has to buy a License from Blooom to become a part of our Ecosystem.
2. BI [Blooom Integrator/Ecosystem Integrator] - User persona is that of a pre-existing institution, like a Producer Group, Farmer Coop, Farmer Collective who have an enlisted set of farmers. They buy the license from Blooom to integrate their Operations into one digital ecosystem. 

The farmers also pay a nominal fee per year to access the Blooom platform and receive the suite of services. Input and Trading Companies have to pay a basic convenience fee for lead generation and transactions with the farmers. 

The key revenue drivers are broken down as follows:

1. License Fee - Annual
   1. BE - US$ 65
   2. BI - US$ 314
2. Farmer Subscription Fee - Annual
   1. Farmer - US$ 7
3. Marketplace Transactions
   1. Convenience Fee - 5-10% of Transaction value

In 2016, at the inaugural MIT Inclusive Innovation Competition, where eKutir was the finalist, I had pitched the genesis of the idea of what eventually turned into Blooom. It was the beginning of my journey to re-define the future of farming, driven by farmers and enabled by technology, The biggest inspiration was the years of work done prior, and lives of farmers changed by simply assisting them through a series of steps. 

My observations were indicative that most attempts at helping smallholders fail because they do not develop a genuine, micro-level understanding of their needs and constraints, and cannot engage them in a manner that establishes trust. And it was pivotal to look at this at scale, at exponential scale, where millions of smallholders can be assisted at the push of a button or by simply speaking to a voice assistant. The innate need to serve the smallholders and develop a solution so intricate and so fine in its print that is works as if it was next to the farmer in observing each movement through the cropping cycle. Over the years, I have understood the problem and the solution proposed has all the technology available, and its applicability and sheer need to be assisted by mission-aligned and adept peers/mentors is what drove me to apply to SOLVE 2020. 

Solution Tech

1. Data Analytics - this will give us a powerful platform to consolidate all our various operational systems data to give all our internal and external users access to an easy to use analytics interface to get on demand actionable insights.
2. NLP & UX - one of the key goals we have as Blooom is to get the power of our platform directly into the hands of low literate farmers. For this we need to completely redesign and incorporate the latest natural language processing (voice) and other user experience technology into our mobile applications.

Product Distribution

1. How might Blooom scale to impact 10 Million farmers sustainably? This is based on determining a channelisation through a hardware partner and OS-embedded Blooom app, which would be in the hands of low-literate farmers. 

Talent Recruitment & Board

1. Primarily to assist in Solution Tech, Product Dev and Fundraising only. 

We are open to the partnerships as aforementioned and the specific partners can be evaluate later on a case-to-case basis. 

Our ten-year vision: Democratizing the future of farming

In developing countries, smallholder farmers feed 60 to 80% of society, yet they are not fully a part of it. They are deprived of information, access, attention and respect. Their lives are steered by forces that they are helpless against – be it the below-market prices that buyers offer them, or the next drought or flood brought about by climate change. Currently, most smallholders are isolated from solutions, at the mercy of an increasingly hostile environment.

That is going to change. Ten years from now, farmers will act with a sense of agency, in a market defined by mutually advantageous relationships. They will see opportunities around them and will know how to seize them. In our vision, farmers do not feel that they are “beneficiaries.” They feel in control.

We have seen this change happening in the last 10 and 14 years of our histories, and in the next ten years we will see it on a much larger scale. Farmers in the communities that we are working with will understand the factors that affect them. In fact, they will be hungry for knowledge. Villages will be buzzing with discussions of experiments with new crops and better farming practices – just like eKutir’s Farmer Interest Groups and Fairtrasa’s agro-entrepreneur cooperative meetings currently are. Farmers will have faith in their farms, and for a good reason.

Crop failures will be fewer, yields greater, incomes sufficient and stable, and hunger will be almost as unthinkable as it currently is in the Global North. Families will have the necessary surplus that enables choice. More of them will be able to invest in the education of their children and in the further, well-planned development of their farms – just like many of our farmers do today.

More women and men will use the platform on their smartphones, instead of through Blooom Entrepreneurs. They will perceive technology as a natural, integral part of agriculture. Many farmers’ kids will in fact be motivated to seek a career in AgTech. It will also be natural for villagers to see women interacting with the platform and managing their own farms. And when farmers go to the market, it will be natural for them to feel like they are equal players and will know exactly what price that they can ask for.

Farmers will also know what they can expect from the weather. They will be bold in making new choices, changing crops, trying new strategies. They will not see agriculture as a routine chore anymore, but as a knowledge-driven system, where the more they learn and the better choices they make, the higher their rewards will be. 

The evolving technology, the constant surfacing of new information and new opportunities will make farming interesting, not only for farmers, but also for the community, and for society at large. Agriculture will be regarded as an important mission that farmers can excel at and feel proud of. Through farming, women and men will be able to gain a sense of dignity. Most of all, it will be this dignity that will draw younger generations back to the land – who will save smallholder agriculture, and with it, our food security.

Today, Blooom relies on the human-digital interaction to create value and generate impact for smallholder farmers. To understand how we plan to augment our platform using AI, it is pertinent to understand the Tech Platform and How Blooom works. 

Tech Platform

Blooom is a comprehensive, modular tech platform that can be used via an Android mobile application and a web-based interface. 

Pre-Harvest

The goal of Blooom’s pre-harvest side is to increase crop productivity and sustainability, while derisking and reducing the cost of cultivation. Complemented by an inexpensive soil testing solution, a dynamic, highly context-sensitive smart farming engine provides advice on what, when and how to plant, nurture, and protect from disease, and through recurring use builds the ability to give farmers an RoI forecast for each crop. 

Blooom creates a profile for each farmer, capturing basic data points including land maps, as well as social data such as family size. It then tracks the use of inputs and crop protection as well as the amount and the price of the produce sold through the platform. The pre-harvest side can be broken down into the following modules:

Risk – this module assesses each farm based on a comprehensive list of 169 risks that may affect smallholders. Part of the process is automated based on existing data on location, size, soil quality, etc. Another part of it is based on data input by Blooom entrepreneurs or farmer collectives. One of the results is a customised risk mitigation strategy that guides farmers through the necessary steps to minimize risk factors. The other is a risk score, which helps financial institutions assess whether they are able to provide loans and insurance to previously data-less farmers. The platform also offers the possibility of attaching a risk mitigation terms sheet to loans, legally requiring farmers to take necessary measures, which increases the chances of securing loans for even those farms that have a high-risk score. This way they can make the investments that are necessary to derisk their farms.

Plan – Plan gives farmers an overview of the required activities and nutrients for each crop before making a purchase, and once they have used the platform for a period of time, it can tell them their expected returns on investment, based on a range of factors including land size, soil quality, available inputs, season, climate, market prices and trends and farmers’ previous transactions. It warns if there is a resource gap between the requirements of the selected crop and the soil quality and inputs available for the farmer. 

Seed – If one had to name the single most important component that a farmer’s fortune hinges on, it would be the seed. In developing markets, procuring high quality, soil-appropriate seeds at the right time is a very significant challenge. This module recommends farmers best fit seed based on local availability, climate, season, and data from soil analysis. It tracks farmers’ previous purchases to ensure regular seed replacement in order to prevent soil exhaustion. Once farmers have made a choice, the platform aggregates local demand to ensure the best possible price from a marketplace of vetted, trusted suppliers.

Nurture – Nurture uses data from soil testing to recommend farmers the most appropriate fertilisers for their selected crops, helps them purchase from trusted suppliers at discounted prices, then provides them guidance on the timing, dosage and application procedure of fertilisers throughout the crop cycle. The module emphasises organic fertiliser use and precise application to avoid excess dosage, currently common with smallholders. 

Protect – This module helps farmers prevent, as well as diagnose and treat crop diseases. Similar to other components of the platform, it enables the procurement of the appropriate protective and curative products at discounted prices, and then provides guidance on the right timing, dosage and application procedures.

We have assessed and hypothesised the following roadmap for AI augmentation of Blooom platform.

1. ROI Prediction - The primary objective of these modules is to assist farmers in decision-making today. What we would like to augment our platform towards is in building "farmer portfolio", which would be a record of their interactions/transaction with Blooom. E.g. if a farmer buys and input, it is a 1; if a farmer complies to Smart Farming recommendation, it is a 1; if a farmer does neither, it is a 0.
   This bit-rate system would be used to build a portfolio of the farmer mapped to transactions and multiple variables, which would be associated with seed, nutrients, pesticides, practices, price points, yield, etc. Once this is established, we can use this portfolio and warehouse it as "training data" to curate ROI for farmers, prior to the farming season. This ROI would predict the best plausible crop-soil-market mix, which would then let the farmer choose.
2. Plant Forecast - To further increase  resilience and sustainability, we are in the process of implementing real time spatial data to monitor, and microclimate data to predict local environmental conditions, enabling the platform to dynamically react to changes, e.g. cautioning farmers not to apply fertilisers if heavy rainfall is expected to avoid both a loss of investment and fertiliser washing into waterways.

If selected, we plan to utilise fund and intellectual support to enhance capabilities of Blooom platform to become the assistant to the farmer in the near-term. Initiation of both these works is based on raising additional capital and hiring resources, adept in helping us build this state-of-the-art platform. 

Our ten-year vision: Democratizing the future of farming

In developing countries, smallholder farmers feed 60 to 80% of society, yet they are not fully a part of it. They are deprived of information, access, attention and respect. Their lives are steered by forces that they are helpless against – be it the below-market prices that buyers offer them, or the next drought or flood brought about by climate change. Currently, most smallholders are isolated from solutions, at the mercy of an increasingly hostile environment.

That is going to change. Ten years from now, farmers will act with a sense of agency, in a market defined by mutually advantageous relationships. They will see opportunities around them and will know how to seize them. In our vision, farmers do not feel that they are “beneficiaries.” They feel in control.

We have seen this change happening in the last 10 and 14 years of our histories, and in the next ten years we will see it on a much larger scale. Farmers in the communities that we are working with will understand the factors that affect them. In fact, they will be hungry for knowledge. Villages will be buzzing with discussions of experiments with new crops and better farming practices – just like eKutir’s Farmer Interest Groups and Fairtrasa’s agro-entrepreneur cooperative meetings currently are. Farmers will have faith in their farms, and for a good reason.

Crop failures will be fewer, yields greater, incomes sufficient and stable, and hunger will be almost as unthinkable as it currently is in the Global North. Families will have the necessary surplus that enables choice. More of them will be able to invest in the education of their children and in the further, well-planned development of their farms – just like many of our farmers do today.

More women and men will use the platform on their smartphones, instead of through Blooom Entrepreneurs. They will perceive technology as a natural, integral part of agriculture. Many farmers’ kids will in fact be motivated to seek a career in AgTech. It will also be natural for villagers to see women interacting with the platform and managing their own farms. And when farmers go to the market, it will be natural for them to feel like they are equal players and will know exactly what price that they can ask for.

Farmers will also know what they can expect from the weather. They will be bold in making new choices, changing crops, trying new strategies. They will not see agriculture as a routine chore anymore, but as a knowledge-driven system, where the more they learn and the better choices they make, the higher their rewards will be. 

The evolving technology, the constant surfacing of new information and new opportunities will make farming interesting, not only for farmers, but also for the community, and for society at large. Agriculture will be regarded as an important mission that farmers can excel at and feel proud of. Through farming, women and men will be able to gain a sense of dignity. Most of all, it will be this dignity that will draw younger generations back to the land – who will save smallholder agriculture, and with it, our food security.

Why are we eligible?

Blooom reduces agriculture-related CO2 emissions by helping farmers transition to organic inputs, crop protection and sustainable farming practices, and by optimising logistics and increasing fuel efficiency in the supply chain. While there are no available baselines with which we could compare our carbon reduction impact in the field of logistics, baselines do exist for smallholder farming. This enables us to retrieve carbon credits. We have already established a partnership with an expert organisation that will lead annual audits and trade the resulting credits in carbon markets. Our initial target is to channel 80% of the value generated this way back to farmers. Our plan is to provide this transfer in the form of credit within the platform that they can use to purchase sustainable inputs and crop protection. This way we can not only give an additional boost to smallholder farms’ bottom lines, but also create a virtuous cycle for sustainable farming (ie. they generate credits by farming sustainably, which they can then spend on sustainable products).

Through our work in the State of Odisha, India, we have registered our work under the Gold Standard VM0017 Sustainable Agricultural Land Management

Two sources of emission reduction are relevant for the BLOOOM project i.e., (1) emission reduction from reduced synthetic fertiliser application and (2) emission removal from increase in soil organic carbon (SOC):

The use of organic growth promoters allows farmers to apply 30% less N-synthetic fertiliser. The annual emissions reduction potential resulting from the reduced use of synthetic fertiliser is 0.07 tCO2e/ha 

The annual emissions removal potential resulting from soil carbon increase is 0.46 tCO2e/ha.

Thus, Blooom through its intervention can offset 0.52 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide emissions per hectare and has projected to sequestrate 100,000 metric tonnes of CO2 by 2023 and 2.47 Million metric tonnes of CO2 in ten-years. 

How do we plan to use the funds?

If selected, we would deploy these funds as incentives to farmers and captivate them as part of our Smart Farming offering. Each farmer would then be eligible for generating Carbon Credits @0.52 tCO2e/ha and this shall be used for generating additional revenue for the farmer, managing the soil-health and generate positive returns for Blooom and Planet Capital.