The ‘Technical Assistance to the Modernisation of Agriculture Programme’ (TAMAP) funded by the EU conducted a workshop titled ‘e-Agriculture and Digital Market Platforms’ hosted a workshop bringing together important stakeholders from the e-Agriculture and agriculture sector.
The main objective of the workshop was to understand existing systems and digital tools and their ability to achieve more resilient, productive, and sustainable agriculture and food systems, thus empowering farmers’ livelihoods.
Several Digital Market Platform providers showcased their e-Agriculture solutions and innovations supporting the nation and the agribusiness sector.
Dr Nayana Dehigama, Executive Chairman, EPIC Technology Group, explained the company’s ‘Helaviru Digital Economic Centre’ platform as a “digital ecosystem of agriculture stakeholders, with many apps that act as a digitally connected community of the stakeholders who are engaged in the agriculture sector.”
He elaborated that the stakeholders are farmers, growers, product producers, aggregators, wholesalers, retailers, industries, large scale buyers, exporters, and service providers, including transport, machinery, banks, logistical companies, consultants etc. “We have not eliminated a single actor in the supply chain but empowered every actor to conduct their trading. We want to eliminate unwarranted, unethical practices, influences in the middle that manipulate pricing, practices that create waste that drive up the cost of production, so profitability comes down,” he said.
Dr. Dehigama noted, “Agriculture productivity of this country is still low. We need to support the farmers and the sector as the younger generation is moving away from farming. We want to create a different environment, an image for the younger generation to come forward as agriculture entrepreneurs, give them a different brand.”
Charitha Ratwatte, Head of Group Sustainability, Dialog Axiata PLC, explained the importance of collaborations and partnerships in e-agriculture and their work with numerous stakeholders. Dialog’s ‘GoviMithuru’ platform is Sri Lanka’s first e-agriculture service contributing towards the country’s agricultural vision and development through technology.”
Currently, Govi Mithuru serves 25 crops with over 600,000 users. The platform has also expanded into other services such as ‘Saru’ which are affordable protected and automated agriculture kits; ‘Saviya’, a mobile based advisory service for dairy farmers; and ‘Sayuru’ a service for day-boat fishermen to receive early warnings, and encourage sustainable fisheries.
In the pipeline, the company is looking into digitizing the leaf colour index , code it for every variety, helping farmers check the nutrition status and deficiencies of plants.
“We are working on digitizing different aspects of the value chain, working at the major bottlenecks and helping people so that they understand and trust that technology can help them. Our aim is low cost and scalability. It is about risk sharing where we end up with something that is sustainable for all parties.”
Presenting details of ‘Govipola’, Suren Kohombange, co-founder of Govipola said, “Price transparency and access to markets are the basics of Govipola.”
Govipola is recognised as Sri Lanka’s first and largest online agricultural trading platform. The trilingual mobile phone app and web-based programme allows farmers, buyers and sellers to access prices through the app.
To-date Govipola has processed 45,000 downloads, has 800 visitors daily, has 600 posts from buyers and sellers, 100,000 metric tonnes listed on the platforms while providing information on 28 types of categories across 286 products.” He added “Moving forward, we want to change it to a more transactional system. As a result of our partnership with the EU, we were guided and assisted in developing a matching engine which we successfully launched early in the year. It is a new journey which we think no one has explored in Sri Lanka.”
While private sector stakeholders are important, governments also need to benefit from digital technologies opportunities provided for the agriculture sector.
As the lead agency harnessing ICT for economic and social advancement, Jayantha De Silva, Chairman of the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) stated that , “We are going to revamp our multi-site and started the e-Grama Niladhari project. We own the largest cloud infrastructure network - the Lanka Government Network in Sri Lanka. As government we aim at reaching out to smallholders and all, even the most remote part of Sri Lanka. Government wants to collaborate with the private sector to achieve this.”
Expressing his views and elaborating the Government’s role Dr Ajantha De Silva, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, said, “There are many players working from the beginning of cultivation until the product arrives at the plate or with the exporter. The country needs the e-agriculture solutions, especially in the situation we have been experiencing in the last few months with the Covid19 pandemic, it is timely and we are ready to support it”.
In response to the question whether e-agriculture is the solution, or if there are other solutions available he noted that while e-agriculture is one option, “We cannot leave our traditional ways of doing business, we also have to think about the small vendor and develop solutions for them.”
0 comments: