Agro Processing

For Better Products

Natural products are perishable and prone to microbial growth. With our processing methods, we ensure that they stay fresh and safe while protecting the nutrition value. The automated washing technology removes microbes, harmful pesticides, and chemicals, without removing the nutrients.

Leaf™ products are Safe and Dependable.

Post-Harvest value Chain management methods

The advancements in Agro-processing technology allow us to: Optimize harvesting time. Cold-storing of raw fruits and vegetables. With secure handling of the produce, Leaf™ limits

With secure handling of the produce, Leaf™ limits wastage and ensures that the products are clean and green. Our state-of-the-art, completely automated processing units can handle cleaning, grading, drying, storage, treatment, packaging, and retail re-packing.

Retaining Freshness & Enhancing The Product’s Shelf Life.

Our advanced, environment-friendly, PUF-insulated Cold Rooms are supported with 24×7 power backup. The tropicalized refrigeration units are precision-made to exude the right temperature. They conform to international standards to preserve items for long durations in all seasons.

Eat Right Out Of The Package

Our products are packaged in CORALENE antifog film – a bi-oriented, co-extruded polyprop-ylene film for wrapping fruits and vegetables using flowpack packaging machines. This makes it free from microbes and ready for consumption.

Waste Management

We ensure what comes from our land doesn’t end up in landfills. Our R&D team develops new products and processes to recycle waste, agricultural residues, and by-products for better economic utilization.

Smallholder farmer challenges

Farmers face challenges across the Ag lifecycle – access to quality inputs, information & advisory services, inability to bank within the village, accessible storage and logistics, and appropriate credit product.

The complex nature and manual processes of the agriculture value chain create inefficiencies, waste, and fraud. This magnifies the challenges faced by smallholder farmers in rural communities; the longer the transfer process is, the more expensive, time-consuming, and insecure the process becomes.

Ability to source quality inputs

Many farmers are unable to obtain quality inputs due to a lack of knowledge, funds, and means of access. Quality seeds and fertilizer are the keys to increased harvest that is of the quality required by buyers – poor quality inputs have a 42% lower yield than average.

Low productivity due to lack of advisory

Many smallholder farmers have no access to formal training or expert advice on farming practices, such as how to fight pests and diseases, track weather patterns, and conduct good business practices. This results in low crop productivity.

Availability of credit

Our research indicates that 75% of farmers require credit for purchasing inputs, although only about 40% have access to formal finance. This also is predominantly asset (land) backed lending by Public sector Banks, while cash incomes, low account usage, and lack of collateral, documents, etc lead to an almost lack of formal private sector credit access for smallholder farmers.

Market access, pricing & logistics

Smallholder farmers often rely on middlemen/ local buyers to access markets, even preselling their crop at the beginning of the season, resulting in significant loss of crop value from skimming and value chain inefficiencies. They are, hence always looking for better markets and pricing for their produce. They also lack efficient means to transport small quantities in a timely manner.

Timely crop payments

Today, most smallholder farmers receive payments for crops in cash, which is slow, unsafe and perpetuates the lack of access to financial services, as there is no digital record of a farmer’s cash flow. Smallholder farmers may have to wait days or weeks to get paid

Smallholder farmer challenges

India’s premier not-for-profit organization focused on marginalized farmers livelihood improvement
More than a decade of experience in bringing sustainable impact to millions of small-land hold farmers

Objectives

  •  Establish Sustainable Livelihood for marginalized farmers
  • Drive transparency in the entire agriculture lifecycle
  • Circular economy project development for the farming community
  • Climate resilient agricultural practices development
  • Reduce agricultural carbon footprint by reducing green house gas
    production from fields
  • Access to / facilitate affordable farmer financing
  • Improved farm mechanisation and productivity
  • Enable forward market linkage to help farmers to market their
    produce
  • Improvement in farmers’ incomes
  • Enable digital engagement among farmers

Scale of Impact

From 1 million farmers as of 2022 to 5 million farmers by 2025

How the impact will be delivered?

  • Provide a technology driven ecosystem (Aggrow System) wherein a farmer’s needs are met/ assisted/ supported
  • From sowing (accessing latest available and quality inputs, soil testing services)
  • Access to credit (cost-effective source of finance)
  • Growing (advising on good agricultural practices, newer/ modern
    scientific techniques)
  • Crop Monitoring
  • Insurance (crop protection)
  • Weather information
  • Market linkage (price information, identifying buyers)

How the impact will be delivered?

  • Provide a technology driven ecosystem (Aggrow System) wherein a farmer’s needs are met/ assisted/ supported
  • From sowing (accessing latest available and quality inputs, soil testing services)
  • Access to credit (cost-effective source of finance)
  • Growing (advising on good agricultural practices, newer/ modern
    scientific techniques)
  • Crop Monitoring
  • Insurance (crop protection)
  • Weather information
  • Market linkage (price information, identifying buyers)

Where do we intend to do this?

  • Provide a technology driven ecosystem (Aggrow System) wherein a farmer’s needs are met/ assisted/ supported
  • From sowing (accessing latest available and quality inputs, soil testing services)
  • Access to credit (cost-effective source of finance)
  • Growing (advising on good agricultural practices, newer/ modern
    scientific techniques)
  • Crop Monitoring
  • Insurance (crop protection)
  • Weather information
  • Market linkage (price information, identifying buyers)

Farmer Services Division

Input sales

Sale of high-quality inputs – seeds, fertilizers and plant protection

Purchase of produce

Purchase of produce from farmers at transparent prices providing prompt payments “at farm” sourcing of produce including support on harvestin

Farmer Services Center (FSC)

Advisory services

Constant support to the farmers through dedicated extension services team

Enable access to financing

Access to input financing through tie-ups with banks / financial institutions

Functioning of Farmer Services Division

  • Each FSC will target 15,000 farmers in its catchment
  • Each AEO will engage with 2,500 farmers.
  • Each AEO will work with 1 FPO (1,000-1,500 farmers) and rest being
    smaller groups of farmers.
  • Each FSC will have a centre head who will work closely with the
    regional and divisional head
  • FSC head will be accountable for ensuring that impact targets are met
  • Farmer meetings are conducted regularly
  • Farmer related information is captured properly on the digital platform
  • Monthly MIS is generated and reported
  • Farmers’ concerns and grievances are redressed
  • Farmer income improvement is being monitored

Digitise the FPO/farmer transactions to enable scale

  • Delivering best practices digitally through LEAF Farmer Network
  • Push notifications and messaging on critical weather updates, market prices, are useful tools in the hands of the farmers for informed decision making
  • Facilitating access to online marketplace and farmer-oriented information available online
  • Training farmers on accessing weather related, price related, farming related information
  • Collate, document / digitise all farmer and farming related information
  • Can be accessed and utilised for betterment of farmer’s access to finance, inputs, market
  • Aggrow will facilitate access to efficient harvesting methods through adoption of technology

What does LFN solve

Enables a comprehensive 360-degree functionality that digitizes the entire farmer lifecycle

  • Transparent and direct reach to millions of farmers and FPOs
  • Buyers will directly engage with FPOs for procurement
  • Realtime information about weather, crops, market through a tech enabled physical touch points
  • Affordable credit for buying inputs
  • Good quality inputs and best Agri practices

How will LFN solve

Unique 360-degree solution for farmers that can help them improve their incomes by 50-80%.

Enable market linkages for farmers

Aggrow will support the farmers in accessing quality seeds, inputs and newer techniques for application.

Enable access to markets for liquidation of produce. Aggrow will assist in identifying prospective buyers for the produce

Solving the challenge of lack of transparency in pricing their products

Farmers have price information only after reaching the wholesale markets (mandi)

Farmers are at a disadvantage as they are forced to sell the produce at the prevailing market prices

Aggrow will strive to provide access to prices for various grades of produce

Farmers can take informed decision on liquidation of their produce.

Drive financial inclusion

  • Incentivising farmers to shun cash and adopt formal banking channels
  • Training / sensitising farmers about the benefits of transacting digitally
  • Facilitating adoption of card payments
  • Digitising the rural merchant ecosystem as well
  • Capturing and building data about farmers’ financial activities
  • Enable inputs and post-harvest credit for them
  • Enable FPOs to access credit, to enable them to improve the scale of their transactions
  • Enabling them to transact or cash-out within the village ecosystem

Farm management advisory

  • Focus on regenerative farming technique
  • Improving carbon content of soil to improve soil strength
  • Impress upon the farmers to use seeds & inputs that will improve the quality of harvest
  • Bring about changes to irrigation techniques
  • Advise on timing of harvest
  • Advise on inter-cropping pattern
  • Facilitating soil testing, report interpretation and remedial measure suggestion
  • Educating farmers on post-harvest storage techniques
  • Adoption of technology for field monitoring and data collation
  • Assisting farmers with grading and sorting techniques and assistance wherever required
  • Sensitise farmers on Government projects, schemes, programs

Reduce Green House gases Leveraging Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning

  • Digitization of agri extension crop lifecycle activities
  • Soil health related information to improve quality
  • Periodic Weather forecast to improve productivity from the field
  • Reduce usage of pesticides and chemicals
  • Reduce the cost of production to improve soil health
  • Reduce green house gases production and sustainable livelihoods

Thriving with LEAF

Looking to enhance your agricultural operations? Connect with us today for expert advice and tailored solutions!

Head Office
Lawrencedale Agro Processing India (P) Ltd 42/14,15 Jadayampalayam, Karamadai Block, Mettupalayam, Coimbatore – 641302, Tamil Nadu, India.

Email: info@lawrencedale.com