Ooty-based Lawrencedale Agro Processing India (LEAF), an integrated agriculture technology major, is planning to transform the lives of more than three million marginalised and tribal small-hold farmers within the next two years, said a top executive.
“We cannot afford to ignore the large positive force which this segment can bring about in the rural landscape in India,” said founder & CEO of LEAF, Palat Vijayaraghavan in an interview.
According to him, the marginalised farming community, constituting about 85% of the agriculture sector, can substantially spur the consumption of multiple services in India to help the country to reach its GDP target of $5 trillion.
To achieve this goal, LEAF is implementing an aggressive go-to-market strategy through its technology platform LEAF Farmer Network (LFN) powered by Mastercard and has aligned with multiple stakeholders in the agriculture ecosystem.
Mr. Vijayaraghavan said a farmer does multiple transactions right from harvest to realisation of it. There are numerous transactions, mostly done through cash, and as a result there are no records. The biggest problem for multiple service providers is lack of actual, transparent actionable data.
LFN is a differentiated platform floated to solve multiple challenges of farmers in a transparent manner. The entire process is managed by farmers, with support from on ground teams from LEAF.
LFN solves that specific issue by harnessing the power of technology to route all transactions through the digital platform. This would help the ecosystem partners to analyse and take crucial business and commercial decisions based on transaction data of farmers on a daily basis.
“The scale with which we are enabling transactions is enormous. The core of LFN is that it enables transparency of all transactions in the entire agriculture lifecycle,” he said.
“This initiative will also support the farmers through comprehensive training and capacity building in entire lifecycle of the harvest, including post-harvest management to reduce wastage,” he said.
