About Project
This project aim to address the problem farmers face while selling their produce in Madya Pradesh, India. Low price realisation and too many middle men between them and consumers.
Objective:
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Finding the root cause of economic problem of farmers.
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Providing real world solution helpful for them.
Project type: Group of 2 people
Design Process
Secondary Research
Primary Research
Ideation and Concept generation
Stakeholder map
Stakeholder Interview
Prototype and Testing
Research
Selling cycle of Indian Farmers. They take their produce to APMC called Mandi in local language.
Which is then get auctioned by Commission Agent called Dalal in local language.
It is later transported to warehouse and to retail shops.
Problems they face
Primary Research
Farmers:
We went to APMC of Ujjain and talked to farmers who came to sell their potato and onion.
We listened to their problem and got few details like their investment is more and return is less.
They buy everything for consumer price and sell their produce in wholesale price.
They are not educated enough to learn new methods.
Commission Agents:
We talked to commission agents who buy these produce from farmers and also listened to their problems.
They told us it is mostly supply and demand game which takes on the price of the crop. If farmers brings crops on demand he will get good price.
Vendors:
We even talked to the vendors who buy the produce from Dalals. They struggle with debt and are stuck with it.
We again got the response of supply and demand which affects the price.
Farmer's Bill and Protest
Bill 1 : Create free unregulated trade space outside the market
Problem: If many farmers will go outside the APMC mandi then slowly the mandi system will collapse and 3rd party traders will regulate unfair price.
Bill 2 : Create farmer for contact farming deals
Problem: Big companies require lot of land which small not have and the companies also make the contract one sided which in the end exploit farmers without a fair deal.
Bill 3 : Eliminate the storage limits previously said by government to control price
Problem: Right now government has some limit in storing essential commodity, breaking the limit can lead to jail. But if the limit is removed then the storage owners will regulate the supply and demand by storing a lot of produce thereby selling on very high price.
Key Insights after research
Insight 1: Farmers are not educated about new technologies and are unaware about other farming methods other than same generation old techniques.
Insight 2: They have no medium to get any information and presently they only get half of the knowledge from village patwari and sarpanch.
Insight 3: Supply demand trends are not monitored and told to farmers so that they grow accordingly which leads to oversupply of produce.
Stakeholder maps
Maps Link
User Persona
Ideation
Info flows
Demand and supply trends, Historical data, Which crop to grow according to your land, Upcoming or running Yojana,
Magazine for farmers with researched paper and new methods.
Detailed map of the land farmers are growing crops and showing a geography and what crops are suitable for the growing there
Process
University papers will be reinterpreted and send as magazine to farmers.
There will be slots for farmers to bring their produce so that there is no over supply.
Workshops for farmer to educate them about new methods where they will be getting magazine and that all the information will be there like contact of University et cetera. If they have any problem, they can call them.
Infrastructure
Monitoring of APMCs.
Maintaining the supply and demand.
Providing the price data for analysis by customer.
A separate Mandi for farmers where they can sell their crops for wholesale, price and consumers can order the vegetables online.
Training
Digital education, Teaching about new methods, How to access Yojana.
There will be a community Who knows about new method or the technology of farmer can hire them and they will teach them in their own farm.
Concepts
Concept 1:
There will be a portal connecting all the Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMCs) in India. Every day, the APMC heads will collect and upload records of all the produce onto the portal. The portal will centralise the supply information for the entire nation, including demand records.
Anyone can access the portal to view the current supply of crops and understand the existing demand, helping stakeholders make informed decisions on how to proceed.
Concept 2:
Slots in APMC where farmers will sell according to their slots to maintain the price, they will be having access to historical data ,demand and supply trends which affects the price.
Concept 3:
A farmers community in WhatsApp where they will know about new yojanas, historical data, demand supply trends, help and support from experts. Any farmers can join the community, ask questions and also learn new methods provided by experts. The experts will be from universities or people who know about their land pattern and crop experts.
Final Concept (Concept 1+ Concept 3)
A national portal connecting all Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMCs) in India will streamline daily records of produce, facilitating centralized supply information and demand records accessible to all. Simultaneously, a farmers' WhatsApp community will offer a platform for farmers to stay updated on government schemes, access historical data, discuss demand-supply trends, seek expert advice, and share knowledge. The community welcomes all farmers to join, ask questions, and learn from experts, including those from universities and experienced individuals familiar with land patterns and crops.
System Mapping
Provided Solution
Chat Bot
The chatbot was tested with local villagers of Madya Pradesh.
The default language is choosen to be Hindi because when observed many farmers use Hindi as a default language in their smart phone.
Newspaper
This will be a monthly newspaper which will be sold in APMC mandis to the farmers. This newspaper will contain price predictions, new technologies in farming sector, how to grow exotic crops, yojanas, etc.
Front page of the newspaper will have a QR code to listen the news as a audio.
There will be facts like how waste like stubble or rotten crops can be used to earn money and how farmers can use less medicines and pesticides in their crop to make it more nutritious.
There will be ads section in back page where if some hotel want to contract some about of vegetable for them they can publish it and farmers can contact them and sell their crops in consumer price.
