Transform your agri-input management with Agritech

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), up to 40% of global crop production is lost each year due to pests. Plant diseases cost the global economy more than US$220 billion, and invasive insects cause at least US$70 billion annually. Therefore, crop protection products or agricultural chemicals are important for pest control, weed, fungus control and diseases that damage or destroy crops and curb agricultural production.

Following are some of the factors for the increased incidence of pests and diseases:

• Increased threat from climate change
• Changes in the migratory patterns and geographic distribution of insects
• Prolonged duration of infection and disease stages
• Unpredictable weather events impair the effectiveness of crop protection products
• The spread of pests, weeds and diseases has increased with an increase in global travel and trade.

The crop protection industry is constantly innovating to meet challenges and provide the targeted solutions farmers need to protect their crops. However, it faces industry-specific hurdles, including regulations, concerns about environmental pollution, lack of traceability, etc.

Overcoming the Challenges in the Way of the Development of the Crop Protection Industry

In an internal survey conducted by Cropin, 43% percent of crop protection companies surveyed revealed that supply chain management is the biggest challenge they face today, followed by accurate demand forecasting (41%).

Some of the solutions offered by the Unified Cloud Platform are discussed below.

1. Efficient agri-input supply chain management

Crop protection companies have traditionally followed an ‘inside-out’ operating model for their supply chains – increasing operational efficiency and competing by reducing costs. However, the COVID-19 crisis highlighted the importance of building sustainable, resilient, collaborative agri-input supply chain management systems.

With the digitization of the entire business value chain through platforms such as Cropin Cloud, a reactive approach to post-pest infestation management has the potential to be proactive by predicting pest and disease incidence, forecasting demand and managing supply efficiently.

2. Precise crop protection demand sensing

The industry is also under immense pressure to ensure accurate crop protection demand sensing. In a cyclical industry, with sales fluctuating wildly from one year to the next, it is relatively easy to forecast short-term demand, but much more difficult to predict the long-term trends that matter to the industry. The time has come for crop protection companies to re-imagine their strategies and put in place a digital foundation to increase resilience, improve agility and drive business growth.

For example, digital tools like Cropin Apps can use their contextual deep-learning models to help crop protection companies understand precise crop protection demand. Cropin provides data-driven intelligence and additional business insights tailored to specific needs using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) models. Currently, 60% of the entire crop protection business value chain is digitized, and 93% of the business chain is expected to be digitized by 2024.

3. Lack of silos

According to an internal Cropin study, the top three challenges for crop protection companies in adopting digital technologies are business silos (41%), lack of digital talent (38%), and lack of workflow optimization (35%).

Business silos arise when multiple departments of a company adopt different point solutions for digitization. This results in lack of coordination and inadequate collaboration between departments, which stifles progress and prevents the industry from reaching its full potential. This can be addressed by deploying an integrated cloud platform such as Cropin Cloud that allows for data democratization. It gives employees across multiple departments of the company access to data, thereby optimizing the cost of digital transformation across the organization.

Crop protection companies are also struggling to attract digital talent. This can be made easier by customizing talent with the use of clean, conceptualized data provided by Cropin Cloud, which also allows for workflow optimization of various tasks.

4. Better evaluation of crop protection products

The availability of effective and safe pesticides is critical for a sustained increase in agricultural productivity. Cropin Cloud’s 22 contextual deep-learning and AI models allow reliable analysis of pests and diseases with data from globally deployed field-tested models for yield maximization. Based on the world’s most comprehensive crop knowledge graph, the models fine-tune to specific crop varieties, locations and conditions, and allow accurate assessment of the efficiency of crop protection products.

5. Comprehensive Data Management

Comprehensive data inputs are critical for risk mitigation and efficient collaboration between agri-businesses and crop protection companies. Forecasted data about market risk, crop health, weather fluctuations affecting crop quality, etc. are among the valuable discussion points in this context.

Cropin apps can help organize and manage data across a comprehensive platform with easy access and visibility. It also allows companies to track and benchmark dealer performance and analyze payment history and credit limits. It helps agri-businesses identify high- and low-density sales points and manage dealers and distributors seamlessly.

6. Accurate Market Intelligence

Accurate market intelligence can help a company formulate effective sales and marketing strategies to achieve business goals, meet market demands, and significantly reduce the time-to-market of products. It can also help meet government standards and regulations.

Cropin solutions provide crop protection companies with real-time, plot-level insights into agro-input resource utilization, farmer engagement, adherence to a package of practices, and field officer productivity. Ground-level knowledge of specific crops cultivated in a given region, agro-chemicals required depending on the agro-climatic zone and crops, sowing dates of the crop to ensure product availability, etc. can empower enterprises.

Companies can keep a close eye on soil and crop health and make accurate demand forecasts based on different stages of the crop cycle. Cropin apps also strengthen pre- and post-distribution processes in the supply chain and provide end-to-end visibility and traceability in agriculture.

Unique Cropin Benefits

The ability to detect crop diseases early and control them with minimal environmental damage is critical to agriculture. Cropin uses weather forecasts and historical crop disease data to predict the likelihood of a disease with its Disease Early Warning System (DEWS) model and alert farmers. It also enables to engage farmers and helps train them on precision farming techniques. This intelligence is of immense value to crop protection companies in managing the demand-supply equation.

Digitization to enable collaboration and reduce risk for crop protection companies

Crop protection companies can transform interdepartmental coordination and collaboration with other agri-industry players, farmers and field officials by deploying the agriculture cloud platform CropIN to realize the full potential of a connected future. Cropin Cloud Platform uses AI/ML to derive data-driven intelligence to reduce risk. It accurately estimates the demand of crop protection companies through crop protection demand sensing model. Using this intelligence, the industry can reduce the time to marketing and distribution. Thus, by deploying Cropin Cloud, crop protection companies can more effectively compete and succeed in a digital-first global marketplace.