Crop Management: How Agritech is Transforming Crop Strategy
Managing teammates, meeting deadlines, ensuring productivity can be quite a challenge in our day-to-day life. Especially if we don’t have the right tools at our disposal. Now, think of us having to handle every aspect of our jobs manually, from reports to insights.
Sounds like a nightmare, right?
Agriculture is no different, although tech and agriculture seem to be poles apart, Agritech is now changing how farmers approach their daily operations.
Imagine a farmer trying to manage a tomato crop spread over acres and acres of land, as far as the eyes can see, with just a handful of workers. Crop management is not at all easy, but farmers have been making do for hundreds of years and except for a few areas, not much has changed.
Crop management in India so far has mostly been a manual exercise, but now things are starting to look up, thanks to advancements in Integrated Crop management.
What is crop management in agriculture?
Crop management is akin to managing any enterprise, except we are empowering farmers of today in helping them increase crop productivity, quality and profitability. All the while, ensuring that farmers remain profitable and the environment safe.
How does it happen?
Crop Management employs principles and practices of Integrated Crop Management, wherein waste is avoided, energy and efficiency are enhanced, while pollution is minimized. Simply put, crop management is a long term solution, where it combines the best of modern technology with good farming practices.
Why is crop management necessary?
The world’s population has been expanding at an alarming rate and the needs of the people have only increased. From better incomes comes a better standard of living and better living requires better nutrition, which finally makes its way to the farmer of today.
Providing food for an ever-hungry population is a huge challenge. The land and resources available to individual farmers are dwindling due to the fragmentation of farmlands. Also, in the face of increasing living costs and wages, the labour cost to maintain arable land is also quite high.
Would you start and invest in a business if there is no guarantee of profit or returns? Obviously not, because it sounds like a gamble. Unfortunately, this is a reality most farmers have been dealing with. On one hand, their livelihoods depend on farming, on the other, crops rely on unreliable rains, fall prey to diseases and foul weather and even market conditions. All the while catering to the demands of a growing global population.
The result is that more and more farmers are slowly moving away from agriculture, which is terrible news. However, with crop management, farming is now as predictable, and profitable as any business.
To maintain a profitable business and increase the productivity of land, there has to be a strategy in place to maximize the crop yield. This is where data-driven Integrated Crop Management comes into play.
Integrated Crop Management can help us practice ecologically sustainable farming with an eye on quality, quantity and profitability, like any sustainable business.
When farmers are able to accurately predict the weather, analyze trends, allocate resources and check productivity, there is little room for error and uncertainty. Certainty and profitability in agriculture ensure profitable farmers, which only bodes well for the global agricultural market, not to mention farmers, directly.
The methodology used for crop management
Integrated Crop Management provides farmers with a 360-degree solution along with a long term strategy for increased production.
Some of the components of integrated crop management are crop rotation, soil and cultivation, crop nutrition, crop protection, wildlife and landscape, energy consumption, pollution and waste and finally organisation, auditing and assessing.
ICM employs scientific research in providing natural and ecologically friendly solutions in dealing with problems. From using biological practices in crop pest management to using natural predators to counter pests.
For instance, when it comes to the Cotton crop, Crop pest and disease management in ICM employ natural predators to counter pests. Cotton crops are known to be prone to diseases and pests, especially the dreaded Helicoverpa, and while there are different ways to fight the pest, using natural predators such as Damsel bugs, night-stalking spiders and Red & Blue Beetles are proving to be popular choices in cotton crop management.
How Kheti Buddy can help in crop management?
Whether you’re an aspiring farmer or a traditional farmer looking to enhance productivity, fight crop diseases and increase profits, Kheti Buddy is the buddy you can count on. As the name rightfully suggests, Kheti Buddy handholds and walks you through understanding and implementing Crop management thoroughly.
Ever since its inception, Khetibuddy has been successfully championing integrated crop management practices in India and helping farmers skill-up and scale-up seamlessly. The Khetibuddy farm management app allows farmers to plan cropping based on the farm’s real-time data on climate and soil health conditions. Once planted, you can easily manage your crop production right from sowing to harvesting.
You can also seek out farm advisory from agri-experts on your crop strategy for the next few months. Whatever your crop, Turmeric or Potato, Sugarcane or Tomato, Khetibuddy will ensure a great harvest by inculcating the right farming habits.
Using Data to fuel crop management
Our Farming Mobile app helps you understand which cropping strategies are working for you and which have failed. Based on the data input on your farm and the weather conditions as well as past data, you can find out the right crops to grow for each cycle, how much to spend, and foresee the exact ROI on your farm activities.
Our farm field management software is intuitive and super easy to use. You can prepare all the data you want and download it at one click. Keep all your data on crop schedule, soil data, profit and loss all in one place. You get to see it all in one dashboard and take it with you wherever you go. Avail the peace of mind of knowing and predicting the profitability of each harvest and use this data to fine-tune your strategies.
When you use the Kheti Buddy farming mobile app, you gain access to a plethora of benefits like:
Daily reminders on what and how-to-do crop management activities
The complete digitization of key farm management practices
Capturing of soil and water health data through various sources
Recommendation of the right fertigation practices
Advice integrated with your land and weather data
Integrated inventory to ensure you have the right fertilizers at the right time
Historical data of your crop to ensure every learning is documented
Complete financial management of your farm
Local language support
You can download our Farming mobile app for free on Playstore, it’s your trusted companion on the field to help you with the right advice at the right time. Use our crop management software to avail more productivity per acre and unmatched quality of produce.
If you’re a farmer owner or business looking to get into smart farming, talk to an expert from team KhetiBuddy learn more.
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