2 ideas for future discuss two big ideas which are important to the world in general and India in particular. Agriculture prices world over are behaving erratically and policy makers are more focused on post harvest scenario than managing crop patterns, Given the availability of data, it is possible to build tools which can give farmers better understanding as to which crop shall be cultivated thus increasing income as well as normalising pricing shocks. Second idea talks about impending water crisis which is going to hit India and other developing nations due to large population and diminishing water reservoirs.

1. © Shailesh Vickram Singh
2 Ideas for the future
Talk delivered at “Acumen Fund – Ideas for
the future Word”
Shailesh Vickram Singh
twitter : @svickram
blog : fringenotes.in

2. © Shailesh Vickram Singh
Idea 1: Near Term

3. © Shailesh Vickram Singh
Crop Cultivation Forecasting Models

4. © Shailesh Vickram Singh
Increasing population and climate change will create
more food price shocks in time to come. However
this food price shocks instead of impacting income of
marginal farmer in positive way, will further
destabilize them. This will create serious challenges
for Govt., Policy makers!

5. © Shailesh Vickram Singh
Agriculture commodity price scenario
• Tahir Square / Arab spring started with rising cost of bread
• In 1999 and 2013, Delhi state govt lost state election because
of rising vegetable prices
• Despite all intentions and strategy, Governments have failed
to predict or manage agriculture commodity price shocks as
govt present strategy on price control is more of a knee jerk
reaction than any strategy

6. © Shailesh Vickram Singh
Cultivators : Forever disadvantaged
Despite rising cost of agriculture commodities, farmers are not
able to reap benefits as their behavior is very similar to small
retail investor in share market
• Sell before price rise ~ Crop prices generally rise after 2/3
months of post harvest, while farmers generally sell crop
immediately post harvest without any knowledge of
demand supply situation
• Wrong crop selection : use past data ( past high prices) to
grow crop thus resulting in glut or shortage in a very
cyclical fashion

7. © Shailesh Vickram Singh
Mis Placed Focus : Post Harvest vs Crop Selection
• Unfortunately rising price is always attributed to post
harvest phenomenon i.e. lack of storage / supply chain /
stocking and weather (storage of food grain doesn’t work as cost
of new food supply is lower than cost of stored food supply on
account of better road network and even weather cycles. This
phenomenon removes any economic incentive for storage of food
supply)
• While the problem is more related to crop selection and
related to pre cultivation i.e more of supply related

8. © Shailesh Vickram Singh
Opportunity
Data
i.Crop pattern and cultivation data available (Remote Sensing)
ii.Better weather data prediction tools
iii.Advance knowledge on outbreak of disease as well as data on better yielding crops
iv.Irrigation pattern data
v.Availability of price movements as well as crop performance data across region and globally
Delivery
i.Cheaper smart phones
ii.Coverage of 3G and upcoming 4G networks

9. © Shailesh Vickram Singh
Impact
119 million Cultivators in India alone

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Secret sauce
• Data, data and data with ability to weave pattern from existing
data points to predict future price behavior based on supply /
production data
• Mobile focus
• Vernacular product to cater to rural population

11. © Shailesh Vickram Singh
Idea 2 : Future Shot

12. © Shailesh Vickram Singh
Water world : 2025

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Country of Billons

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With vast network of rivers

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which has reduced to

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Further Challenges to water
• Domestic RO plants – waste 20 liter of potable water to
produce one liter of drinking water – 700 liters drained every
day per house hold ~ 1 million household in Delhi with RO
plant, waste 700 million liter
• Declining ground water – borewells banned in most part of
country and every year water table declining sharply

17. © Shailesh Vickram Singh
Future or Nightmare crawling towards us!!!

18. © Shailesh Vickram Singh
Opportunity
Next war is going to be fought for water

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Opportunity / Road ahead
New paradigm needed to think about water solutions.
Existing solutions are creating more stress ( RO plants,
filtration plants, bacteria led solutions etc) than
creating viable options. Hence it needs policy
intervention as well as private innovation to bring
bigger impact

20. © Shailesh Vickram Singh
Thank You
Shailesh Vickram Singh
t ~ @svickram
w ~ fringenotes.in