E-learning for, by and of farmers: This app offers subject expertise for each crop

Information about the best practices was relatively easy to get, Ghule said. Be it the local input seller or the influencers on YouTube; everyone had something to say about agriculture. But for Ghule, what tossed the coin for SetuFarm was the choice of subject matter expert and the proper end-to-end connection.

“The course was really exhaustive in nature – it taught me the right manner and the depth of tiling to the correct amount of inputs to be used and when. The course answered all my queries,” he said. He said that the subject matter expert is not only a PhD in agricultural science but also a champion cane farmer with a consistent 100 tonnes per acre record for many consecutive seasons.

The challenge for farmers like Ghule these days is dual — how to increase per-acre production and reduce the production cost. While the former can be easily done with increased input usage, the latter is the hard nut to crack. SetuFarm, the app by the full-stack agritech platform FarmSetu, has come up with a solution that now tries to answer these questions digitally.

Bhushan Nikam, business head of the company, said the answer lies with farmers who have both technical and on-hand knowledge. Nikam’s company joined hands with The Farm- a Daund-based Agriculture consultancy firm- to design, publish and make the online course.

Ritesh Popalghat, CEO and co-founder of The Farm, said the difficulty was developing content that would plug the present system’s holes to ensure farmers pay and get what they paid for.

“At present, information available to farmers is mostly from three sources- the local input shop, the social media influencers and consultants. In all three cases, there is a conflict of interest and the farmer sometimes ends up paying more than required,” he said. Agri input companies sometimes have consultants, but the same consultant advises for different crops, and their information can become generic.

Thus when designing their course, Popalghat and Nikam kept in mind that instead of academics, their subject matter experts should be farmers cum academicians who have thorough knowledge about their subject, both in theory and practice.

“Ankush Chormule, the CEO of GannaMaster, and Ajit Gholap, who both have a record of 100 tonnes/acre for cane and tomato, respectively, were chosen for the respective crops. This gives an extra layer of authenticity to the course,” they said.

Online courses are currently being run for sugarcane, tomato, soyabean and millets. The course fees range from Rs 1,499 for cane to Rs 499 for soyabean. Nikam said courses were launched after proper surveys of farmers and inputs from the target beneficiaries.

About two to three weeks after the course was launched, the company recorded around 150 sales. “To date, our app and its services were by invitation only, so most of the enrollment was organic. We hope to plug the gaps in present-day agriculture through our endeavour,” they said.