dFarm: Modernizing Agriculture Supply Chain

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Venkatesh Babu Vadlamudi, President, and CEO, dFarmVenkatesh Babu Vadlamudi, President, and CEO
An estimated 30 percent of the global food produce worth US$ 680 billion is lost along the food supply chain. Such massive loss, especially in the wake of the problematic pandemic, increases the concerns regarding food wastage, quality, and safety. The prime culprits for these undesirable outcomes are the lack of traceability in the agricultural supply chain, delayed financial transactions and settlements, and overheads associated with manual work/workflows that could easily be digitized or automated. Optimizing food processing procedures, connecting all the vendors in the service industry, and streamlining supply chains with the help of technological solutions can take the industry a long way in rerouting around many of its inherent challenges. Unfortunately, the usage of technologies in the ag supply chain is less than 1 percent globally.

By utilizing enabling technologies including Blockchain, artificial intelligence, big data, the internet of things, and a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model, dFarm connects global produce anywhere in any market. Their solution enables even a small farmer to operate like in corporate farming. The company provides its Agriculture Information Management System (AIMS)—a software solution that makes the produce supply chain more visible, transparent, and efficient. By connecting the farmers with infrastructures in the value chain, it provides wholesalers and retailers with total visibility into each intermediary point in the supply chain, enabling them to trace different types of produce, the exact source of all produce, and monitors compliance requirements.

In an interview with CIO Applications, Venkatesh Vadlamudi, President and CEO of dFarm, shares insights about the company’s software offering and how it makes the produce supply chain more efficient and visible.

Please shed some more light on the AIMS offering and its value proposition.

AIMS leverages blockchain technology to precisely track the produce’s movement through the supply chain, ultimately providing actionable insights across the entire agriculture supply chain while enabling rapid cost calculation and autopayment settlement. It first creates smart contracts for all the vendors in the supply chain management and then calculates the pricing from the farmer to the buyer. This ensures that there’s no waiting for the farmer or any vendors once the retailer makes the produce’s purchase.

AIMS recognizes the farmer’s demographics, produce’s details, and data of harvest, which helps to match the output with the demand. This is one of the powerful ways we can synchronize the whole supply chain

We have built our application in AWS based out of enterprise-grade AI modeling core system. In addition, we use AWS SageMaker and Jupiter Notebook for our predictive analysis and regular data management operations. We also leverage linear regression modelling to give insight into different entities involved in the ecosystem. Apart from this, AIMS utilizes APIs to integrate all kinds of applications used at the pack houses, cold storages, and other points in the supply chain, thereby working as the back-end application for their existing software.

Please elaborate more on how AIMS stands to benefit all the stakeholders involved in the ag supply chain.

We have filed four patents supporting our application, relating tote efficient connection of farmers’ produce with the ecosystem and the calculation of the value for every participant. Once the produce is sold and the money is received, the solution will do automatic settlements to all the participants, including farmers.

AIMS records the farmer’s demographics, produce’s details, and date of harvest, which helps to match the output with the demand. This is one of the powerful ways we can synchronize the whole supply chain. We believe predictive analysis will be the game-changer for our industry by making predictions beforehand and saving crops from wastage. For example, for a perishable crop that needs to be sold before harvesting, predictive analysis can be instrumental. This will also help avoid wastage of produce up to 20 percent.

With unprecedented visibility into the entire supply chain, stakeholders can monitor compliance at each step of a commodity’s journey, perform tracking and tracing with surgical precision, and instantly know when issues need to be addressed. AIMS helps in performing real-time cost calculations for commodities and all comprehensive services and settling accounts rapidly. Our software helps stakeholders understand local, regional, and global market dynamics by providing actionable data and business flexibility and selling commodities for the highest price.

Who are your typical customers? And how does AIMS eliminate the middlemen from the ag supply chain?

Our software integrates everyone included in the agriculture supply chain, such as the farmers, suppliers, distributors, retailers, and even different kinds of supply chain ecosystems. Moreover, we provide our offering free of cost to the farmers. Our software removes the need for manual intervention into any Ag supply chain network. It identifies information using data modelling and provides updates and insights in real layman language to the end-user such as farmers at no cost. Apart from this, advanced users such as business analysts and field officers can also use our application to monitor farming and gain visibility over the supply chain, which will help them make better decisions. And this is how AIMS effectively removes the middleman, which further helps to reduce inflation. By removing the middlemen, AIMS helps save a few billion dollars along the ag supply chain while enabling better produce output.

What does the future hold for dFarm?

We have built a robust technology that is useful for every individual associated with the ag supply chain. Since we started our journey, we have received enthusiastic responses from our customers. Our product and technology have helped many farmers across the globe. To date, we have successfully integrated 4 million farmers into the AIMS supply chain. We are optimistic about seeing this number grow. The entire team of dFarm is proud of its product and the added value it brings to every consumer associated with the supply chain, directly or indirectly. We aim to be the game-changer for farmers by revamping ag supply chain management.

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