Climate-resilient regenerative agriculture

Open field agriculture supports millions of lives in India and the global south and is the primary source of food for the world. However, the current format is broken with:

• Worsening soil degradation & erosion with 40% of soils worldwide moderately to severely degraded, and the potential for this to become 90% if deforestation and other practices persist.
• Increasing chemical usage in the form of fertilizers and pest/herbicides which has negative effects on biodiversity and human health
• Increasing losses due to erratic weather events owing to climate change with an estimated 100 Billion USD worth of agriculture related losses annually.

Regenerative agriculture has the potential to solve for the negative environmental & biodiversity impact and also boost soil health for the long term, but there are concerns to the deployment and scalability:

1. Climate risk: It remains susceptible to climate related risks as it is exposed to the elements, being another form of open field farming.
2. Ease of transition: Lack of a reliable supply chain to get access to quality inputs limits farmer’s uptake as the supply chain for the conventional methods (fertilizers and pesticides) is actually quite robust.
3. Knowledge Transfer: Lack of access to quality information & advisory to allow farmers to adopt regenerative practices successfully.
4. Market Price Viability: All success stories in the regenerative space rely on some form of premium to be paid by the end consumer to drive their sustenance. This makes true scale difficult to achieve as farmers need the assurance of being viable at market prices to take the plunge at scale, particularly since yields may be lower in the initial years when they switch to regenerative practices.  

Our solution is creating de-risked, economically viable farms of the future which work for the farmer, the environment and human health while promoting biodiversity.

To achieve this, we are currently focused on developing our own managed farms which leverage the integration of science, engineering and technology with planning, operations efficiency and a strong commercial focus. This is done with the aim to create a model that addresses risk and makes regenerative agriculture viable at market prices.

We are integrating these pieces as below:

• Science – Focus on academic research translation and complementing with field trials to build best practices when it comes to seed selection, companion planting, disease and drought resistance. This is combined with optimizing the plant nutrition management practices to optimize yield while managing ease of deployment and costs.
• Engineering – Keeping humans at the heart of agriculture is important for any solution for the global south as majority of farmers are small holder farmers who cannot afford large-scale mechanization. This requires engineering custom-made solutions which are focused on affordability, efficiency improvement and robustness. Additionally, integrating water shed management in farm layout design helps reduce risk exposure while maximizing benefits.
• Technology – Deployment of the knowledge & practices at scale requires the use of technology which works for the end user – the farmer. Our approach is 2 folds – translate the package of practices built by the sciences team into actionable daily checklists which can be communicated to farmers in a simple manner in their own languages; and also allow integration of weather, IoT and other data points while leveraging AI/ML models to enable farmers to make timely decisions to enhance productivity & reduce losses.
• Planning & Operations Efficiency – An organization which works with buyers on one end and farmers on the other to optimize planting decisions and facilitate distribution, storage and sharing of resources is critical to ensure that reasonable cost structures are achievable while reducing spoilage and increasing realizable value of the produce.
• Commercial Focus – Creating farms which are viable business units requires focus on hedging risks by planting several crops at one time, taking market input to aid crop selection and setting up the right market linkages to absorb all produce at market prices.

We are building for farmers – both small-holder and others. The current average income from agriculture for a farmer in India is 106 USD per month per acre which is significantly lower than their family’s requirements. This forces short-term and long-term migration for work and leads to associated problems. This problem is further compounded by the reducing size of landholdings with each generation.

At a pilot level, our approach has resulted in revenues per acre which are 10X of the current levels. If we are able to translate a portion of this (after addressing our costs) to the farmers, they stand to more than double their incomes from farm operations.     

However, the model we are proposing – which is one of the few ways they can truly reduce exposure to climate related risks and improve financial outcomes – is a significant departure from current practices.

Knowing that farmers will be difficult to convince, we are focusing on our own farms in the initial phase. This allows us to perfect the model in a controlled environment and build the products and linkages needed to successfully execute with farmers directly. It also allows our company to have a financially independent pathway to growth. Our current approach is to focus on a geography (Udaipur presently) and manage operations across leased farms. These farms will be the areas where we perfect the recipe for that geography, climate and local context. They will be live ‘showrooms’ for farmers in the vicinity to see that the model works. Once they agree to partner, the farms will double as supply chain depots for the farmer’s inputs needs and also the collection depot for their market linkage needs.

We are based out of Udaipur, Rajasthan where our farms are located. We have been working with the farmers of this region for the past 6 years as farmers and partners ourselves. Our own learnings from being a farmer has influenced significantly our decision making process and intervention design. The farmers close to our pilot farm have been observing the success and have been interested to join forces, but what was holding them back was the assurance of market linkages – which we could not commit to at an early stage, but which is what we are building towards as we grow.

At the same time, we have extensive experience from our corporate stints to build and manage teams in engineering, operations and other business critical functions. The combination of being a farmer and a professional for over 15 years gives us a perspective which is unique and gives us the confidence that we will be able to build for the future.

We have been working on the problem since 2018 with most of our initial work happening on our pilot farm. On our pilot farm, we achieved revenue benchmarks of 10X the regional average numbers and also successfully grew more than 30 variety of crops using regenerative and organic practices. Since 2023, we have been onboarding new farms and are currently operating on 7 farms around Udaipur with about 23 acres under management. We have successfully grown over 50 varieties of crops till now and manage a basket of 10-15 varieties of crops at any given time. We have developed our own in-house solutions for drip irrigation systems installation and optimization. In addition, we have engineered our own automation solution for easing irrigation in larger farms. We have managed to reduce water related risks on at least 3 of our farms, by using GIS and contour survey data to design collection and recharge ponds and drain channels to minimize flooding. At the same time, we have a local customer base of over 500 customers who buy produce from us and participate in our farm events. This is in addition to sales of produce through B2B channels.

We have the audacious dream of fundamentally changing our food systems while positively affecting how we connect to nature and food. And we know that we will need all the help we can get to solve this. MIT Solve provides us the perfect opportunity to connect with stakeholders in the technical and financial ecosystem who we can collaborate with to expedite the development and deployment of our solutions.

Specifically, we are looking for the collaborations to help us in the following:

• Build a world-class sandbox for all companies and other enterprises wanting to further the cause of regenerative agriculture to try their solutions on the ground with the help of our operations & sciences team. This will help accelerate the ecosystem growth while allowing us to learn from the best & integrate in our operations workflow to get best-in-class results.
• Leverage existing technologies to solve specific challenges in the agriculture space which may or may not be their designed use case.
• Leverage the financial ecosystem to secure funds to allow us to do more translational research & engineering design and accelerate the deployment of solutions.

There are four key things that we are solving for which we believe are unique and where the innovation truly lies.

1. Creating a De-risked farming model: Integrating climate impact (including increased pest and disease occurrence) into our model and designing to hedge against these effects is an important lens of our solution. The integrated approach – which includes science, engineering and commercial focus to design inherently de-risked and viable business units is unique and is fundamental to our success.
2. Accessible Technology: A typical farmer in India knows how to grow 4-5 different varieties of crops in total. Asking them to switch to a model where there are 5-10 things growing on the farm at any given time (to hedge against risk) is complicated as each crop has its own nuance and specificity. Building a technology solution which works for them, and allows them to run their farm to the highest potential, while serving as a guide and enabler is key. Our solution, FarmD, which has been built on our own experiences employs a different approach tested and tried for years on our farms.
3. Market price viability: While we are following organic and regenerative practices, we are laser focused on achieving market price viability as we are confident that true scale in our solution can only be achieved if we are able to make the solution economically viable at market prices for farmers. Our efforts here have been guided by a single metric – RSFM (revenue per square foot per month) while selling at market prices. At a pilot level, we have been able to generate a RSFM of between 1-2 INR consistently. This is already 5-10 times what a typical farmer in India is able to generate. This is with the slightly lower productivity in the initial periods and can easily improve and guarantee viability even with the impact of commodity price fluctuations and market dynamics for the farmer.
4. Building a nodal network out of managed farms to solve for distribution & market linkages:  The biggest learning for us in our 6 years of work as farmers has been the importance of a robust supply chain for inputs (of the sort that the government has achieved for fertilizers and pesticides) and market linkages for sales of produce. Our managed farms approach solves 2 problems sequentially. First, it allows farmers to see for themselves how this new model works in their own backyard – thus making it easier for them to transition. Secondly, these farms will also serve as depots for inputs and collection points for produce located close to the farmer, solving a key challenge with the right economics and enabling the farmer to make the transition.

Our solution will be a managed farm operation concentrated around a city node in the initial period. This allows us generate revenue to fuel our growth, provide spaces for field trials and  while also allowing us multiple ‘showrooms’ to reach farmers in the local areas. The idea is to deepen our proficiency in specific conditions while showing that an alternate farming model works, to farmers in their own backyards. This will allow farmers to have the confidence to switch as they will have seen the model work in their locations. In addition, they are assured support for inputs, advisory and market linkages – all done locally. On our end, the asset light expansion model is what will allow us to focus on the scale up of acreage under regenerative agriculture while creating a big supply pool of produce which we can leverage with buyers to get assured volume contracts and get better pricing at reduced risks.    

Our impact focus is split 4 ways:

1. Increasing acreage under regenerative agriculture practices – At the heart of what we are aiming to do is making regenerative agriculture the default practice. The aim is to have more than 40,000 acres under regenerative practices by 2030. These could be acreage that we are managing or which farmers are managing themselves with our collaboration.
2. Increasing revenue per square foot per month at market prices – Our success lies being able to generate the right economic value while operating at market prices. Our target is INR 2 per square foot per month which is 10X of current values.
3. Ensuring better income to farmers – We started our business with the aim to benefit the small holder farmers which make up 85% of the Indian farmers. Ensuring that they are able to derive maximum value from agriculture on their lands while building for the future is key. We are targeting a min. 4X increase in the farmer’s income from agriculture.
4. Connecting people to nature – Our final focus area is one which we believe is important to drive a movement towards sustainable food systems at scale. Making nature based activities, be it children’s camps, school nature-based activities or farm 2 table events commonplace and involving people from all walks of life in them are key for us. Our aim is to engage physically with 100,000 people by 2030 and virtually with over 1 Million people.

Our technical core is made up of 3 pillars:

1. Sciences: Building a strong repository of relevant academic research coupled with relevant field trials to consolidate a practical package of practices for a large number of crops with specific geography and climate indications as an input to farm operations
2. Engineering: Designing & fabricating custom solutions for a market which is not on any manufacturer’s radar due to size limitations. Solutions which reduce costs, increase efficiency and boost productivity while being accessible to small holder farmers are the focus of our engineering effort. Examples include low cost, non-permanent, support structures to support climbers which can be implemented with ease at scale, without worry of theft and removable when crops change.
3. Technology: Translating the knowledge repository in an easy to digest format for the end user – the farmer or farm supervisor - is the key role of technology. It has the additional function of aiding the farmer in overall farm management by becoming the single source of information flow and data capture (including plant specific details).

We have a team of 34 split into 5 main verticals apart from support functions:

• Sciences: which currently has 6 bioscientists
• Engineering: which will have 2 engineers and 2 interns
• Technology: which currently has a team of 2 full stack developers, 2 who have recently been hired – one full stack developer and one AI/ML focused developer and 2 interns
• Operations: which has 1 Operations Manager assisted by 2 agronomists, 3 field supervisors and a team of 10 full-time farm workers.
• Sales & Distribution: which has 1 Sales Manager assisted by 2 store managers, 3 helpers and 1 logistics in-charge

We have been working on the solution for 6 years now, farming ourselves since 2018 and evolving our solution since then. The initial 5 years was focused only on one farm and solutioning by ourselves. Since 2023, we have been expanding to more managed farms and have been developing our team as well.

Our core team has 4 founders, 2 of whom are female and 2 male. Our office team is also 60% females and 40% males across all disciplines, including STEM-related roles and leadership roles. The farm workers we work with are almost exclusively females. In addition, in the Indian context – we work with people of all castes and do not differentiate in salaries or opportunities. Having a diverse set of identities and ideas is important to us as a company and we strive to create a company driven by innovation where all ideas are welcome and the best ideas are built together.

At present, we manage our own leased farms – where we grow a mix of vegetables, fruits and cash crops. This produce is sold at market prices (with no “organic premium”) through D2C and B2B channels and this is our primary source of revenue making up for 60% of our revenues today. In addition, we also use the farms as venues for events and camps which are designed to bring city folks closer to nature. And finally, we sell our own microbe-enriched compost and rent our custom-designed agricultural implements to other farmers.

Through our business, we are providing freshly harvested produce (grown on hitherto under-utilized lands) using organic and regenerative practices and with low associated food miles to over 500 customers today with offline sales expansion in the works. The fact that this produce is sold at market prices makes healthy food accessible to everyone and we are proud that all our office team buy our produce (irrespective of their income status). In addition, through our farm events & children’s camps, we have impacted over 200 children and 200 adults. And, in the process, we are creating accessible biodiversity hotspots in & around cities to deepen connections with nature and start a sustainability movement in the cities.

Through our business, we are boosting soil health across our managed farms and increasing organic carbon content in the soils & creating carbon sinks while reducing NOx emissions and by avoiding fertilizer usage.

As a business, we have 3 focus KPIs:

• Revenue/sq ft/month: which combines our efforts on productivity increase, derisking, field utilization and market linkages into one KPI which we can all align to
• Acreage under Management: which monitors how we are expanding
• Engagement: which tracks how many people we are connecting with split into farmers, customers, children and academia.

In the future, we believe that we will be able to derive revenue from our Farm Management ERP, FarmD in the form of a SaaS product and also build on our technical depth in the form of advisory & consultancy to larger farm operations.

We are an operating cash flow positive company from day 1 if we discount the expenses on R&D and Product Development. As we scale on acreage, we are confident that we will be able to continue to grow our operations footprint from our business generated cashflow. For the initial expenses related to R&D and Product Development, we are currently raising pre-seed capital of 500kUSD through equity route (CCD) with commitments of 425kUSD already in place from friends and angel investors. We anticipate the need for grants or other investment to sustain our R&D efforts for the initial few years before we are able to self-sustain on this front. Other than that, our asset light model gives us confidence that we will be able to scale operations with minimal capital infusion.