Agtech start-up nurture.farm has rolled out its “Sustainable Rice Program” for the Rabi ‘23 season. The programme aims to make the rice value chain sustainable by implementing techniques that streamline cultivation practices, leveraging artificial intelligence and water conserving technologies to help farmers cultivate more from less.

The pilot is being implemented in Andhra Pradesh & Telangana on 10,000 acres, with more than 5,000 farmers already signed up for the programme, and it is set to scale to more than 1 million acres by 2030, nurture.farm said in a statement.

The programme also helps create traceable data sets, improving soil health, and boosting farm productivity to deliver sustainable outcomes for the farmer, the buyer, and the environment. Hundreds of farmers have pledged and joined the programme to lead the change by transforming the way they cultivate rice.

The implementation of the programme is being monitored with the help of agri-industry experts and researchers from Regional Agriculture Research Station, Marateru under the leadership and guidance of M Bharatalakshmi, Associate Director at the Institute.

Optimising costs

Ashish Dobhal, CEO of UPL SAS, said, “India is the largest producer and consumer of rice, accounting for 21 per cent of the world’s total rice production. The rice cultivation alone contributes to 1.5% of total GHG emissions. Furthermore, rice cultivation requires a lot of water; flooded fields lead to the anaerobic decomposition of soil organic matter, which leads to methane emissions and impacts the soil quality, often leading to the leaching of nutrients and soil erosion resulting in reduced farm productivity. Thus making the transition to sustainable cultivation practices a necessity. The Sustainable Rice Program is a testament to the core mission of building a resilient and sustainable agriculture ecosystem for a brighter, inclusive and more abundant tomorrow.” “The programme is unique and ambitious as it promises to deliver end-to-end implementation, helping improve yield quality, soil health, acreage, optimise input usage and water consumption, shorten crop cycles, boost farm productivity, and reduce the cost of cultivation while ensuring profitability and measurable sustainable impact on GHGs,” Dhobal said

Harshal Sonawane, Head of Sustainability at nurture.farm, said, “The sustainability impact on the ecosystem, be it water savings, implications for preservation of biodiversity, carbon sequestration, etc, will be measurable, verifiable & traceable. These data sets can be compared pre & post-implementation to test the efficacy of the programme. The programme will help mitigate up to 50% of methane emissions, reduce water usage in rice cultivation by 30%, reduce input costs for farmers by ₹500 per acre and improve yield by up to 10%.”

The programme is designed to make the entire rice value chain sustainable, ensuring fair value for farmers on a large scale.

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