The season for paddy procurement has begun at most of the places with the harvest of the paddy crop for the current Rabi season. But would the paradigm for procurement of paddy change during the current season, more so keeping in view the fact that the APMC act has been amended and it is not incumbent upon the grower to take his produce to the nearest Mandi with which he has been associated?
The procurement of the staple crops so far has been influenced by the individual preferences of the designated officials assigned to undertake this job. Amendment to the APMC act has given the freedom to the growers to sell their produce anywhere in India. The government has tried to create an enabling environment to make the procurement market of growers a sellers’ market with the policy intervention of unshackling their bondage to a particular Agri commodities outlet of the vicinity. Now the farmer has the relative freedom to sell his produce anywhere in the adjoining area or even outside his state.
However, to leverage this opportunity of liberty provided by the government the grower has to self-initiate a process of technical valuation of his produce on the qualitative parameters facilitated by the emergence of technical options through AI-based innovative solutions like Qualix.
Qualitative analysis needs to be made a part of the procurement agenda as it facilitates assessing the nutritional value, helps in providing better compensation to the farmers by providing real-time analysis of moisture content, protein and starch composition of the grain, and also traceability.
It has been observed that during the process of harvest quite a lot of standing crop gets wasted. This standing crop may not be fit for human consumption as well, but if it could be analyzed for its starch composition, and if the composition numbers are good it can directly be sold off to the breweries fetching a good price for the grower as also the brewery owners.
The present process of procurement of paddy is an effort-intensive method which is dependent upon human interventions. Qualix has the potential to change this paradigm as its solution provides a 3-tier approach in quality assessment i.e., Spectral, Computer Vision, and Sensor Analytics, to ensure that post-harvest yields are tested quickly and effectively.
It provides extensive coverage of the desired parameters including moisture, protein, oil, and gluten content for chemical and size, color, damaged % for physical quality assessment, etc. One need not even take the produce to the laboratories to get it tested on moisture, protein, and gluten reference points. Qualix has the ability to provide rapid results 1 min/sample, with >95% accuracy as compared to lab results.
The major parameters on which paddy grains are tested include whether the grain is clean or broken, the incidence of insect damage, L:b ratio, discolored, etc. It helps in providing a percentage of damages for each of the concerned parameters riding on vast calibration models, incorporating all major varieties across geographies. Factoring in the aspect of geography Qualix automatically incorporates the element of traceability for the commodity.
When the government has created the enabling environment, the time indeed is ripe to initiate technology-driven testing parameters like those provided by Qualix to make each of the role players in the value change be the winner. Not a tough ask!
For more details, please write to contact@agnext.in or call +91 9700720005