In collaboration with Cropin, develops user-friendly mobile apps to provide farmers with insights on their crop health including a disease early warning system
PepsiCo India, through its brand “Lay’s”, announced a crop & plot-level predictive intelligence model to help farmers maximize potato yields coupled with quality via functional dashboards on user-friendly mobile apps. Launched in collaboration with Cropin, a leading global agri-tech company known for creating the first industry cloud for agriculture, this initiative is a part of PepsiCo’s ‘Precision Agriculture’ model for India and is being implemented as a pilot project in demo farms at Indian states of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.
Most farmers in India own less than one hectare of farmland and face constant challenges due to lack of means to evaluate the optimum consumption of agri-inputs like water, fertilizers, and pesticides as well as actionable weather data. For example, potato yield losses caused through the blight crop disease can go up to 80% if not forecasted early. Significant yield loss caused due to ground frost is another serious issue for potato farmers especially in the northern parts of the country.
The new initiative under the PepsiCo-owned brand “Lay’s” has the potential to address these challenges by using satellite imagery correlated with remote sensing data to provide insights. The system can generate a forecast up to 10 days in advance which can assist farmers in identifying different crop stages, and close monitoring of crop health, including a disease warning system that relies on weather forecasts and historical data.
In India, PepsiCo works directly and indirectly with over 27,000 farmers across 14 states and 100% of the potatoes for its “Lay’s” brand are sourced from farmers within the country. In its pilot stage, the necessary training and handholding to the farmers is being provided through field agronomists who are helping them understand the dashboard and leverage the insights. Currently, the model covers 62 farms as a trial: 51 in Gujarat and 11 in Madhya Pradesh.
