How a Mulberry Plantation Owner successfully saved upto 20,000 litres of water every month
Overview
Our client wanted to improve the yield and save water and other agricultural inputs. With the help of Intellifarm by Datakrew, the client was able to monitor farm-level conditions. He was able to save water and get actionable alerts, recommendations, and real-time insights on field conditions.
Client Profile
Our client is a prominent Mulberry farm owner from the Solapur district of Maharashtra, India. They cultivate cash crops like grapes, sugarcane, pomegranate, etc. in addition to vegetables. They are a family-owned business with rich knowledge of agricultural technology, employing leading Agri-tech consultants.
Problem
Our client followed a periodic irrigation pattern of watering every 5 to 6 days after visual inspection. 10,000 to 13,000 litres of water were consumed in every such irrigation cycle. Since they were unable to monitor or access the soil, plant, and environmental data, it lead to excessive or inadequate usage of water.
This lack of data also led to over or under usage of other agricultural inputs like fertilizers and pesticides. As a result of which the plant became prone to diseases and produced a low yield.
Solution
IntelliFarm - Datakrew’s Smart Agriculture solution was introduced to address the client's concerns. The system was completely set up within 24 hours. MADS, our IoT-integrated monitoring and alerting system was used to remotely monitor, analyze and predict cumulative water usage, fertilizer drainage & root activity. Through regular data collection and insights, the IntelliFarm solution found the optimum soil moisture content (in %) threshold limits. The limits consisted of 3 indicators:
- Green (>55%)
- Yellow (52% - 55%), and
- Red (<52%)
Timely alerts with recommendations were also set up to notify the client. Based on the recommendations counter actions could be taken to rectify the issue.
Results
With IntelliFarm, a continuous real-time view of the following parameters was made possible.
Soil Parameters
- Moisture content of the Soil
- pH of the soil
- Conductivity of Soil
Environmental Parameters
- Temperature
- Relative Humidity
- Precipitation
Plant Parameters
- Cumulative water usage
- Disease Monitoring
MADS helped with yield improvement, fertilizer reduction, disease prediction, and soil condition monitoring. Since the data collected was stored and made easily accessible, it enabled the client to make data-backed decisions. And by replacing the periodic irrigation cycle with an alert-based approach, our client was able to save water to the tune of 20000 litres of water month-on-month.
Benefits
- Improved Yield
- Reduced fertilizer usage by ~27 to 30%
- Saves 20000 litres of water month-on-month
- Actionable alerts and recommendations
- Farm-level weather forecast
- Customized solutions