Expressnews
Coimbatore, February 2023: Aspiring to provide farmers with access to Package of Practices (PoPs) of important crops under the Crop Production Guide 2020, The Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU), has signed a mutual pact with WayCool, India’s leading food & agri-tech platform, today. With the strategic collaboration, TNAU will enable the digitization of its existing PoPs to benefit farmers, in a quest to empower the farmer community in Tamil Nadu and support WayCool’s endeavours. The PoPs will be made available to farmers’ under Outgrow, WayCool’s farmer engagement arm, through its mobile apps.
The collaboration will provide TNAU faculty members as resource people to train farmers and open grounds for them to research on organic farming in the Outgrow Agriculture Research Station (OARS). Moreover, WayCool will extend opportunities to the varsity’s students to take part in live projects, facilitate internships and placements, and organize field visits to the OARS facility, and help in their journey toward entrepreneurship.
Commenting on the partnership, Honourable VC Dr. Geethalakshmi Vellingiri, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University said, “We established the university with the vision of promoting scientific agriculture and allied sectors to the farmers and agri-based industries. Our association with WayCool aligns our vision and our end objectives to encourage the productivity and profitability of farms while ensuring environmental safety and rural livelihood. We are also keen to team up with the agro-player since our students will gain exposure, enhanced skills, and better opportunities. We take pleasure in supporting the company to transform the agricultural sector and create value for the Indian economy through its demand-based supply chain module. We would further be happy to contribute towards capacity building- technical assistance funds, Climate Funds, and Regenerative Agriculture, along with both pre-harvest and post-harvest aspects in handling produce from farms.”
Commenting on the occasion, Mr. Sanjay Dasari, Co-founder, WayCool Foods, said, “With an ever growing population, it has become all the more vital for India to adopt proper agricultural practices that produce high quality food at a large scale. This has been driving a shift towards precision farming, giving farmers more control over their agricultural practices. There is a need, now more than ever, to create a robust and standardized package of practices and simultaneously work with farmers for their adoption. We are happy to associate with Tamil Nadu Agricultural University who will support us in our endeavours of making natural precision farming accessible, and profitable”
Adding to this, Mr. N Sendhil Kumar, Head – Outgrow & Farmer Engagement, WayCool Foods, said, “ This partnership is another milestone in our efforts to revolutionize the agri-space and empower farmers holistically. The Crop Production Guide 2020 will play a pivotal role in helping the farmers across TamilNadu to acknowledge important crop varieties, farm implements and technologies that will suit the prevailing climate change scenario and accustom their agricultural techniques accordingly. Moreover, the digitization of PoPs developed by TNAU will render easy access to information to them, whilst also extending knowledge base of the same through videos. We are delighted to have TNAU onboard and are confident that this MoU will help us achieve significant strides in the sector.”
