SHANTISHRI AGRITECH (OPC) PRIVATE LIMITED

In their own words

Start-up Note_Shantishri Agritech Agriculture plays an essential role in ensuring a better future for all. As a fundamental connection between people and the planet, it is imperative to ensure that enough food is produced for a population without critically degrading natural resources, we need a transition to Sustainable Agricultural Systems. Farming must be treated as an enterprise, and that future agricultural development will have the returns as well and not just the output from the farms as its prime objective. Today, India is the second-largest country in the world in terms of agricultural output. About 180 million hectare land, 60.5% of total land area, is used for agriculture. In total, the sector contributes about 14% of total GDP and employs more than 50% of the total workforce. Year-round, it experiences four different seasons, two of which are shaped by the affects of the monsoon. Out of this variety has grown 15 different agro-ecological zones, each differing in climate, soil type, fertility condition, cropping patterns, and hydrology. Moreover, the agricultural production system in the country is more vulnerable to damage from extreme climatic events, which causes increased water stress leading to inadequate water supplies for irrigation. Already, rises in average temperatures, changes in rainfall patterns, increasing frequency of extreme weather events such as severe droughts and floods and the shifting of agricultural seasons have been observed in the different agro-ecological zone of India. Long drought spells during Kharif and increased temperatures and unseasonal heavy rains during the rabi season have caused serious distress to the farming communities in different states in recent years. Agriculture in India even today continues to be vulnerable to the vagaries of weather because close to 52% (or 73.2 million hectares area out of 141.4 million hectares net sown area) farm field is still unirrigated and dependant on rainfall. The all India percentage of net irrigated area to total cropped area is even lower at 34.5%. At least three main channels through which climate change would impact farm incomes — an increase in average temperatures, a decline in average rainfall, and an increase in the number of dry-days. All three are likely to be correlated, and therefore the total impact of climate change will not be the simple sum of these individual effects. This incessant climate change could lower the farmers’ income by up to 25%. Indian Agricultural sector is both elephantine in size and complex in nature. Despite the fact that the growth of the agriculture sector has been steadily fluctuating and so as the contribution to the total GDP, farming is the biggest industry in India and plays a key role in the socio-economic development of the country. Our approach to make Agriculture as an enterprise ensuring the profitability, and provides an assessment of progress towards sustainable agriculture, articulated five ideas to realize upon: a) Coach & Encourage Farmers for contract farming supporting the state of the art inputs adopting predictive models for agro-advisory services. b) Adaptation of decision support systems for scenario-based planning setting off the Climate Change Impacts to the extent possible. c) Crop production adopting a “demand-driven approach”; digitally linking the farm field and warehouses with demand centers. d) Improving and optimizing input delivery mechanism and overall input efficiency creating value addition in food systems. e) Synergizing traditional knowledge, agricultural heritage and modern technology, best practices, and research.

Written by the company on its public Startup India profile. Not verified by us.