Hello!! My name is Venky and I thank you for reading Agribusiness Matters, an endeavour to discover systems thinking in the real world - crumbling food and agriculture systems in an age of runaway Climate Change. If you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe and receive exclusive perks - invitations to join ABM Townhalls, special discounts on ABM Publications, Global Agritech 101, 201 cohort courses, and more.
Dear Friends,
Here is the recording of the overview webinar I conducted last Thursday on the Unified Agriculture Interface after kickstarting my new project on driving the Unified Agriculture Interface with a pilot in Nashik, where the future of Indian agriculture is unevenly playing out in fascinating terms.
In building the Unified Agriculture Interface, as my friend Shashi put it, we are mindful of three structures that trigger three different behaviours.
Ecosystem
Network
Distribution
What is an ecosystem?
a) An ecosystem is a structure as well as a process for interaction b) through which various sets of complementary agritech platform players are c) linked to an aligned purpose to d) co-create various forms of shared value.
Today, many agritech players are networked without necessarily being a part of an ecosystem with an aligned purpose and so end up paying higher costs for distribution, locking their customers in silos, fostering a Stockholm syndrome that benefits neither the technologist nor the grower.
This problem has become further pronounced with data becoming “stateless’ and “anarchist”, thereby not respecting any protocol we put in place to deal with the behaviours enabled by the Internet.
Here is a sample usecase: How do you evaluate the efficacy of a cold-pressed seed oil, or any food and agriculture product with contentious nutrition claims? Who determines the protocols that determine the veracity and efficacy of the product you are using?
How do we design protocol-led networks which are unified by a purpose, thereby acquiring a meaning, as Gordon Brander beautifully puts it, that comes from the system surprising itself?
This is no easy task and I would be lying if I told you I know how it is going to be built in a domain like agriculture where zero-sum mindsets often take over in the absence of underlying protocols and infrastructures, leaving farmers and growers, the weakest link to bear the brunt of systemic issues that no one is addressing.
We are clear about this - We are designing a local, community-led open network with the farmer at the centre. UAI will be the hyperlocal arm for other beckn-enabled networks like ONDC.
As I explain in my presentation, borrowing from Dr. Pramod Verma’s presentation at Open Agri Network, we will approach each of the identity elements; map them with the assets and link them with networks.
How to think about this? How to talk about building an underlying network powered by a protocol? Should this be understood by a mental model of a “super app”? Would this also be overtaken by smallholding gatekeepers who insulate farmers from technology? In building a network, are we building an app or a platform? Would this devolve to become LinkedIn for farmers? How can we standardize procurement done on the basis of grading and quality for farmers?
The whole idea of doing this webinar was to seed questions which he hadn’t thought of yet. While we don’t have answers to all the questions, we are figuring it out. If you would like to be a part of this pioneering experiment, fill up this form and we will reach out.
Cheers
Venky
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Unified Agriculture Interface: An Overview Followed by Discussion