The dairy industry contributes around four per cent to India’s GDP, enjoying equal output value with rice and wheat. Still, government involvement is lacking to modernise and stabilise this sector. Farmers are losing money due to non-efficient dairy farming, comparatively weak genetics of Indian cattle, high input cost and non-data-oriented farming. These bottlenecks are preventing Indian farmers to derive maximum value from their farms and dairy businesses.
Digital dairy farming setup
Digital dairy management unlocks the door to great wealth for Indian farmers through sustainable technology and data processing. It provides research-driven dairy sales for dairy foods, farms and businesses. A dairy management and analytics platform removes farmers’ pain points and increases their profitability, manifold.
Farmtree by Inhof Technologies is a farmer’s diary that lets him or her record farm data easily and quickly, which makes managing the farm easy. Due to its seamless user interface, it is easy to operate, too. It is a one-in-all platform that tracks the activities and performance of cows and buffalos in every farm of India, prompting better decision-making and, hence, better profitability. Once data is recorded in the system, the platform analyses and presents it to the farmer for maximising the dairy farm output.
Farmtree app
To avoid missing any activity on the farm, Farmtree sends SMS notifications about each and every upcoming activity of cattle, and easy-to-read reports help the farmer take decisions on farm management. Activities like oestrus of cattle, heat cycles, date of expected pregnancy, commencement of calving or drying periods, and so on are notified to the farmer via SMS. The diary also tracks milk productivity, improves breeding performance, and identifies the most profit-making and loss-making cattle from the herd.
The platform consistently tracks various farm dynamics like farm expenses, cost of feed and its performance, milk performance, per litre production cost, breeding performance, days of peak milk and monthly profitability, among multiple other factors that make a difference. It also assesses recorded milk data of cattle on varied parameters and tracks farm output average to identify per unit cost to produce milk.
Anil Mishra, director, Inhof Technologies, says, “India is a family of 7.5 million dairy farmers, out which 80 per cent have herd size below five. We are on a mission to digitise Indian dairy farmers. While the app is free for use, we also have premium features for commercial dairy farmers that can be bought by paying for each productive cattle. It generally costs ` 20 per productive cattle, per month. After a great response on accuracy and consistency of premium systems, we launched the free system for Indian dairy farmers.”
If farmers want to buy or sell cows or buffalos, the portal lets them trade their dairy cattle in a matter of seconds. It connects cattle sellers directly with buyers. This eliminates the interference of a trader, thus lowering farmers’ input cost. Buyers can be assured that they are making the best buy by checking the performance history data for every cow/buffalo. Essentially, sellers with cows or buffalos with a better history can fetch a higher price.
Mishra adds, “We wanted to enable a free system that already has 900-plus users a month and expected to reach 30,000-plus farmers by the end of 2019. We are focussed on providing a low-cost pocket automation system to Indian dairy farmers suitable in the Indian environment. Since 2016, our plan has been to increase organised dairy farmers in India than to reach maximum users.”
Incubated at IIT Kanpur, Inhof Technologies is a Startup Odisha- and Startup India-recognised startup and, hence, has support from Odisha government. With Farmtree, farmers can become entrepreneurs by using data-driven business solutions. Its aim is to make dairy farming a sustainably organised sector through innovation and optimum data utilisation.
