The JioKrishi IoT device which collects real-time data from farms such as soil monitoring, water levels and weather conditions, helps farmers to make informed decisions, thereby enhancing crop yield while saving cost.
Meanwhile, in dairy farming, the JioGauSamriddhi device which is attached to a cattle’s neck measures key vitals and activities like rumination. These devices are adopted among hundreds of cattle farmers in Amul and Mother Dairy cooperatives.
ET curates a ground report on how agri-IoT is benefitting these farmers.
What is JioKrishi and how is it being used?
This multi-part IoT structure attached to a Jio router can be erected in the centre of the farm to monitor parameters such as weather conditions, soil composition, crop stage and water quantity to send real-time alerts to farmers through mobile app and SMSes.
The system is currently being used across 50,000 acres of farmland across 26 crop categories and brought 15% increase in yield, numbers on its website showed.
Padamakar Patil, a fruit cultivator in Maharashtra’s Jalgaon said, water schedule management and humidity checks have enabled him to produce export-quality bananas which were shipped to Europe for the first time in 2022.
“Time-sensitive water management is the most crucial factor for producing quality bananas with appropriate length and preventing disease like Kharpa,” Patil said. “Many farmers, including me, were able to ship our first consignment of Bananas to Europe which were earlier shipped from the Philippines. We have sold it at a price as high as Rs3200/quintal.”
Patil had spent Rs50,000 to erect two such devices in his farms and a mid-range Android phone.
Sivaram Kalane, another farmer from Ahmednagar said, active water monitoring has helped enhance the quality of his grapes which he could sell at Rs120/kg as compared to Rs80/kg previously.
“I am also soon starting orange cultivation which I had given up previously due to heavy losses amidst poor weather conditions,” Kalane said.
What is JioGauSamriddhi and how does it benefit cattle farming?
This is a simple neck-tag enabled with a sensor to measure the activity of a cow and send back data which is processed by algorithms to determine cow health, pregnancy cycles, rumination etc.
The full stack solution is deployed on large farms housing upto 50,000 cows for advanced analytics and real-time alerts on milking cycles and efficient time management.
Gayatri Jamdar from Satara who uses 12 such sensors said that the solution, on average, has reduced 2 hours of milk loss daily by showing her real-time graphs of her cattle’s heat cycles. She had bought these at a price of Rs3000 per tag back in 2021.
