Digitalizing agriculture with Mayagreens
Project Summary
Farmers continue to face numerous challenges - from labor shortages, and unpredictable monsoons to drastic price changes in produce and interventions by middlemen. The experts from Mayagreens are disrupting the status quo by building a comprehensive farmer-first AGRI automation ecosystem. The goal is to reduce farmer dependency on labor, ensure that crops are fertilized, monitored, and irrigated for an optimal harvest, and obtain a fair price for the produce.
Company Profile
Mayagreens has developed a number of IoT-based solutions to enhance connectivity across the agriculture sector. Their farm controller can automate most of the farming operations which are manually done and labor-intensive. It can connect many devices across multiple farms to create a network of farms and to enable data transfer in real-time. These tech-enabled farming networks ensure that all devices talk to each other and that farmers are geared to make intelligent decisions based on timely receipt of relevant data.
Mayagreens’ platform opens doors for farmers to collaborate, share ideas, discover opportunities, and grow together as a community. Collaborative initiatives like community farming will inspire farmers to work together to drive better revenues, optimize costs, reduce waste at the farm and support each other’s efforts to leverage environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable farming practices.
The Challenge
Mayagreens is focusing its resources on equipping farmers with the tools for success. The efforts are focused on several areas:
- Agricultural irrigation industry;
- Agricultural eMarket;
- Educational institution tie-ups;
- Create job opportunities.
Their farming automation solutions are built to:
RAK Product Used
The Solution
Mayagreens has implemented multiple LoRa P2P solutions in the last 3 years in the agricultural irrigation sectors to control motors, valve operations, etc. The new initiatives will help to expand the current offering for community-based networks, various farming operations, and sensors from the field.
The company is currently building a solution based on LoRaWAN and many deployments in 3-6 months are expected and planned. They have evaluated and started their design using WisGate Edge Lite 2. An upgrade is coming with WisGate Edge Pro which, with its affordable cost-to-feature ratio, is easy to use, has reliable hardware and software, and has low power consumption. The Built-in Network Server and WisDM cloud management make it the perfect gateway for scalable deployments.
As for the product design Mayagreens is using STM32WL family SoCs that are to be combined with RAK’s WisDuo modules and breakout boards to bring LoRaWAN connectivity. WisDuo fits nicely because it is a modular, easy-to-use, student-friendly product. And most importantly it supports RUI3 (Arduino Based), is AT-based, and STM32CubeIDE compatible.
The company’s comprehensive agri-tech innovation ecosystem runs on three core pillars - services to farmers, building the market, and driving good governance initiatives. Mayagreens offers a range of services to support farmers in bringing efficiency to the entire farm life cycle, from seed to product stage. They help farmers meet essential needs from machinery, fertilizer, logistics support, insurance, and advisory services by providing partnerships, community access, and specific solutions. A core aspect of the ecosystem is empowering farmers to sell their produce via market-based monetization opportunities and related services, from online sales support to food processing and exports. Automation will play a key role in enabling the scalability of all the above-mentioned initiatives.
Outcome
Mayagreens have used RAK modules for a limited area and would like to expand the offering in the LoRaWAN domain. This community-based agri network requires many routers to be deployed in various locations including sensor nodes and gateways to collect and upload data to the cloud. The modularity and scalability of RAK’s products are helping the process immensely.
For phase 1, the deployment is covering the agri community in Tamilnadu and Karnataka. Phase 2 will expand to Kerala, Andra Pradesh, and Telangana. If everything goes by the plan, phase 3 will expand to other states.
This community-based farming is the first ever solution ventured in India with the help of government bodies and farmers.
In addition to that Mayagreens is envisioning Digital India's vision and enabling students into the IoT world to meet the market demand. Hence, few colleges have tied up with Mayagreens to design IoT curriculums, lab setup, real-world sensors setup, gateway setup, and consultations.
The next stages are to expand the project with:
- Precise crop-based fertilization;
- Robots and drones for weed removal, spraying pesticides, and disease and pest control;
- Building a community and enabling a comprehensive network for farmers through Mayagreens’ IoT-based products;
- AI/ML-based solution for better demand forecast;
- Direct market access to farmers through an e-market portal.
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