ideaForge and EM3 Agriservices, both market leaders in their respective domains, have partnered to democratize precision agriculture and bring real-world benefits to farmers in India. The partnership will enable them to leverage each other’s strengths of technology and wide reach to offer robust agritech solutions to farmers that will accelerate the march towards doubling farmers’ income. The initial phase of the partnership focuses on programs that stimulate income growth by improving productivity, resource use efficiency, increasing cropping intensity and diversification towards high-value crops.
“Our rugged drones can be deployed in varied weather conditions to generate reflectance and prescription maps that can be used to localize issues and apply location specific remedies. These drones are equipped with advanced automation and highly accurate GPS guidance systems that can provide accurate maps to guide farmers on optimizing the use of land, soil and variable rate application to reduce input costs and environmental impact,” said ideaForge CEO, Ankit Mehta while highlighting product capabilities. He further added, “The real income of farmers in India doubled over a period of 26 years. If we are to grow as an economic powerhouse, it is imperative that we reduce this time period drastically. The partnership with EM3 Agriservices will take drone-enabled precision agriculture techniques to the grassroots level for greater impact.”
While emphasizing on the importance of technology in agriculture, EM3 Agriservices CEO, Adwitiya Mal said, “EM3 Agriservices has a strong connect with farmers in over 3,000 villages in India. As majority of the farmers i.e. around 86% have land holdings of 2 hectares or less, the cost of technology and mechanization is prohibitive for them. EM3 addresses this issue by providing end-to-end on-demand services such as land preparation, sowing/transplanting, crop management, harvesting and post-harvest farm management on pay-per-use basis. As a result, farmers have been able to reduce labour costs by over 50% while realizing a 20-30% increase in yield. ideaForge’s best-in-class drones will provide deeper insights that will lead to further increase in yield while simultaneously reducing costs. Our partnership with ideaForge will go a long way in establishing precision agriculture industry in India.”
About ideaForge
ideaForge, India’s largest drone manufacturer for defence, homeland security and industrial applications, has a vast experience in implementing drone solutions for the agricultural industry. The organization has developed specialized solutions that can provide crop scouting/monitoring, crop volume and vigour assessments, crop inventory (plant counting), crop area calculations, farm boundary delineations, harvest planning and more. ideaForge drones have best-in-class flight time and range and can fly over large fields for longer durations to gather vegetation index images of the plant canopy to determine crop health indicators and assess damage for precision spraying.
About EM3 Agriservices
Serving over 250,000 acres of agricultural land in India, EM3 Agriservices is one of the largest organizations involved in increasing agricultural productivity by bringing technology & mechanization for the farming community on a Pay-for-Use basis. Its flagship service, Samadhan is a Farming-as-a-Service (FaaS) platform that enables technology to reach the farmer and the farm in an efficient and affordable manner through a network of 500 farm centers (Samadhan Kendras). Each center, managed through IT enabled systems and manned by agri-professionals, is equipped to handle a comprehensive suite of basic and precision farm operations throughout the entire crop production cycle.