Fasal Launches Water Credit Initiative, to Encourage Farmers Adopt Sustainable Farming Practices

Bangalore-based Fasal launches Fasal Water Credit to encourage farmers to save water and money with sustainable farming practices. This 2018-founded agritech startup is the leading precision farming and is an IoT based AI-powered intelligence platform for horticulture crops. The platform captures real-time data on conditions from on-farm sensors to deliver farm-specific, crop-specific and crop-stage specific actionable recommendations to farmers.

India leads the world in annual agriculture water withdrawals; globally, 70 percent of the total freshwater is used for agriculture. Agriculture across the world is largely dependent on guesswork of the farmers, but Fasal brings optimal irrigation in action. It eliminates guesswork and use a data-driven approach leading to better quality and an increase in crop yield by up to 40 percent.
“We noticed that farmers definitely over irrigate and this behaviour is common across regions and across crops in India. In horticulture, we have documented numerous cases where the farmer irrigated 30–40 percent less than the previous season with the help of Fasal’s plot specific irrigation recommendations and had more yield and better quality as compared to previous seasons. So ‘more’ is definitely possible with ‘less,” said Shailendra Tiwari, the founder of Fasal, which has already raised $1.9 million from eight investors.

He further added, “We are continuously working on Fasal Water Credit and plan to introduce more and more intrinsic motivations within the Fasal system to make sure that Fasal becomes a powerful force for sustainable and progressive farming in India. Agriculture organisations and farmers working in ensuring sustainable water usage in their production practises, Fasal can flawlessly help them do so.”

Ananda Verma, the founder of Fasal said, “Our approach to innovation has always been incremental and outcome-driven and we believe in bringing visible and sustainable change to the ecosystem we operate in. We have saved about 3 billion litres of freshwater that is used in agriculture and we brought the concept of Fasal Water Credit, one-of-its-kind, to reward farmers who save fresh water and practice sustainability”.