Adding this one mineral will make your food “Nutrient Dense” and body “Resilient”.
It has been estimated that between 0.5 and 1 billion people globally may have inadequate intakes of selenium and these include populations in developed countries as well.
Role of Selenium (Se) :
Selenium is essential for humans and animals but has not been proven to be essential for plants. Low dietary intakes by humans can cause health disorders, including oxidative stress-related conditions, reduced fertility and immune function, thyroid disfunction and an increased risk of cancers.
Selenium in Grapes :
Table grape is a fruit well suited for consumption as fresh-cut product.
Se-enriched fruits is becoming more and more popularity, improving Se content and fruit quality in grape is especially important for human health. Increasing the Se content of grape berries is increased using Se fertilizer application, it increases nutrition quality, including soluble sugar, Vc, soluble protein, soluble solid.
K and Ca content of grape berries may significantly increase, and reduce accumulation of heavy metals Pb, Cr, Cd, As, Ni. Se in fruits is positively related to fruit quality, and negatively correlation of heavy metals.
Se fertilizer can be used to increase Se content of grape with significant effect of increasing grape nutrition quality and an effective means of lowering heavy metals.
How to add Selenium to your crops :
Applying a bio-available product like High-Se containing 0.5% Se to enhance the levels of selenium in crops as an aid to improve human and animal health when consumed.
The important thing here is to apply High-Se right from vegetative growth to fruit set to get the right amount of Se into your reproductive crops. That’s about 3 applications from start of season to harvest.
For Leafy Vegetables 2 applications from a true leaf stage to harvest.
Selenium and Human Health :
Selenium bio-fortification in crops through fertilisation, which was in practice in Finland since the mid-1980s, has been proven as an effective way of increasing human selenium intake.
Studies out of the Arizona Cancer Centre and Cornell University determined that the total cancer mortality was reduced by 50 percent in those taking 200 mcg of Selenium daily. The risk of developing prostate cancer was reduced by 74 percent, colorectal cancer by 58 percent and lung cancer by 48 percent.
For more information and to buy the product visit : www.direct2farmer.com/high-se or give us a missed call on 022-39560561.
How Farmers can Save The World by reversing Climate Change ?
There’s been too much focus on CO2 levels of Atmosphere and related pollution problems in recent times than focussing on putting back CO2 into Soil. Agriculture has never been looked at the way it is now and is becoming more important and will be the only reason for reversing Climate Change. We’ve seen pictures of dense smog in New Delhi and Beijing in media and the only thing we do to show our concern is by sharing the pictures on our FB page or Whatsapp.
We simply watch cities and people go down and do nothing about it. To bring about a change, to reverse climate change, we need to first understand the ‘Carbon Cycle’. We can not make new carbon and we need to drill this hard into our heads.
The global carbon cycle is divided into the following major reservoirs of carbon interconnected by pathways of exchange:
1. Atmosphere (as CO2 and methane).
2. Land : Carbon is stored in the soil as humus.
3. Terrestrials : Plants, animals, humans.
4. Oceans.
5. Earth’s interior.
Carbon moves between these storehouses in a phenomenon called The Carbon Cycle. When we talk about CO2 levels, here’s some perspective in terms of numbers :Soils contain roughly 2500 Gt (1 gigatonne = 1 billion tonnes) of organic carbon, making this the largest terrestrial pool. This is 3 times of what is stored in atmosphere 800Gt and 5 times of biotic (560 Gt). Hence, what we do with our soils or rather what we feed our soils becomes a matter of concern in terms of Reversing Climate Change.
The Problem :
1. Thanks to Modern Farming almost 70% of the organic carbon in the soil is now in the atmosphere.
2. Over farming has reduced Soil Organic Matter globally to below 2% from average 5%.
1. Soils whose upper horizons consist of less than 1% organic matter are mostly limited to desert areas and that’s where we are heading.
2. Oceans becoming acidic and temperature rising thus decreasing the ocean’s capacity to absorb CO2 and retain it.
3. GHG being trapped in the atmosphere and the layer is becoming thicker every day.
The Solution : FARMERS! Farmers are the only people who can save the world and reverse Climate Change. They can do this by adopting ‘Farm Composting’. Stubble burning or the deliberate setting fire of the straw stubble that remains after crop has been harvested is a common and an age old practice. The devastating result – Environmental Pollution, release of CO2 into atmosphere and massive health problem to people. While in countries like China, there is a governmental ban on stubble burning, so has India, farmers from Punjab and Haryana burn an estimated 35 million tons waste from their wheat fields after harvesting, as a low-cost straw-disposal practice to reduce the turnaround time between harvesting and sowing for the second (winter) crop. Smoke from this burning produces a cloud of particulates visible in images from space and has produced a “toxic cloud” in New Delhi, resulting in declarations of an air-pollution emergency. What can Farmers do? Farmers need to take up Farm Composting not as a means of Sustainability Agriculture Practice but as a solution to saving the world from pollution, climate change and as a sign of giving back to the Environment.
A few of the many benefits of Farm Composting are : Reduction in waste volume. A rich, natural fertilizer cuts back on use of chemical fertilizers. Improves soil aeration and drainage. Helps control weeds. Decreases the need for costly watering. An easy to use Compost Maker like “KickStart – C” is suitable to compost all kinds of organic waste generated by : Agriculture Farms.Household. Food Processing Units. Agriculture Markets. Farmers Market. KickStart-C is an effective, safe and environmentally sensitive facilitator of aerobic composting of organic waste. It speeds up natural composting process and rapidly converts waste into a rich manure. It preserves the vital nutrients and organic matter in the waste while making it free from pathogens, foul smells and weed seeds. There can be five billion organisms in every teaspoon of compost, involving over 30,000 different species. What better reason to consider Farm Composting than to create A Better Earth for the generations to come and to leave behind a legacy that it was indeed Our Farmers that Saved the World…?
Why IFFCO’s ‘direct 2 farmer’ strategy will double farmer income?
We recently tweeted that according to Forbes – India has 120 million farmers, out of which 30 million use smartphones and have a basic sense of understanding about digital marketplaces. The day is not far where 120 million farmers would be online on a single platform like ICDP accessing better inputs, modern technology or connecting to buyers fetching better price for their produce.
What is more important is that the Indian Farmer is getting digitised which will eventually lead to farm digitisation and a day will come soon when Indian Agriculture would become ‘Precision Agriculture’ than ‘Guessing Agriculture’.
What this means for the Agri Inputs Industry at large :
1. IFFCO’s step to deliver Agri Inputs is a big step for the entire Agri Inputs industry which has been dominated by archaic regulations of state level licensing. This step would eventually lead to making Agriculture “Centre” rather than “State” controlled.
2. IFFCO’s interest into marketing new age Agri Inputs like High Yielding Seeds, BioFertilizers, Biostimulants, Water Soluble Fertilizers, etc means end of road for DAP, Urea and other heavily subsidised fertilizers which only harm the economy, environment and ultimately the farmer.
3. States like Punjab which still donot allow sale of products beyond the list as per FCO 1985 will now open up and look towards Agri Inputs which add real value to farmers in terms of better yields and quality of produce.
4. The Agri Inputs digital platforms currently with (heavily invested) startups which are just a market place for brands and don’t add real value to the industry will open up to manufacturers and industry leaders going ahead with their own e-commerce platforms like Direct2Farmer.com and mobile apps.
5. More Investments in terms of infrastructure, getting the last mile delivery and supply chain efficiency – to and from farmers / rural areas.
6. Massive savings for farmers in terms of cost of Agri Inputs as the middlemen would be taken out eventually. This will lead to a reduced cost of cultivation and more profit for every farmer. More farmers online means better networking, better, faster flow of information and a better economy. ICDP will have 50 million farmers online on their platform by 2020 and this only means : Good for Indian Agriculture, Better for India, and Best for the Indian Farmer.
Top 10 Journalists in ‘Indian Agriculture’ to follow on Twitter
Nothing gets reported as fast as social media today, especially hard hitting news, articles and opinions on Twitter. So if you are not following…
Nothing gets reported as fast as social media today, especially hard hitting news, articles and opinions on Twitter. So if you are not following these Indian journos who write on Indian Agriculture, you are probably reading yesterday’s news.
Follow them today…
1. Rupashree Nanda @rupashreenanda 23.4k followers
2. Vishwa Mohan @vishwamtoi 4939 followers
3. Madhvi Sally @madhvisallyet 4157 followers
4. Abhimanyu Tyagi @tyagiinc 3083 followers
5. Sayantan Bera @sayantanbera 2427 followers
6. Mohd Mustaquim @mustaquimm 1650 followers
7. Sanjeeb Mukherjee @sanjeebm77 1212 followers
8. Hemanta Pradhan @hemantatoi 1183 followers
9. Dnyaneshwar Bijale @dbijale_sakal 956 followers
10. Sutanuka Ghosal @sutanukaget 283 followers
Feel free to add to this list in your comments….
Innovation in Agriculture – The Agri Inputs way.
Block Chain, drones, harvesting robots, artificial intelligence, remote farm operations, etc are some of the new weight bearing words that are…
Block Chain, drones, harvesting robots, artificial intelligence, remote farm operations, etc are some of the new weight bearing words that are usually thrown around when the word “Innovation” in context to agriculture is used. However, if we try to relate these new keywords in context to a marginal farmer in India who owns less than 1acre of land – we hit ground reality. We then realize what Innovation when used in its real terms of its applicability to farmers really stands for.
Innovation simply means “that which works” or “that which is sustainable in the current scenario of things.”For example, we see innovation in the way farm produce is sold from June-2016 onwards from an APMC centric system to a more open one where the farmer now reaches consumers directly. No doubt there still are challenges in this new model but why was this model tweaked ? Simply because the old one had become redundant and there was a desperate need for a new or rather “innovative” / “usable” model to come forward and it has. This innovation has erupted multitude of startups who now connect Farm-2-Fork in almost every city and more will come with time. The new model accepted by one and all has helped farmers to fetch better market prices, establish a direct rapport with consumers, has helped to better understand the end consumer, make changes in sowing program based on market need and finally has led to more transparency in relationship between Farmers & Consumers.
The consumer is now more aware of the product that he /she buys, its origin, who is the farmer, where is the farm and a chance to give a product feedback – which till date was not possible and never imagined.This is Innovation in Agriculture led to sustainability of not just the farmers by opening up an array of possibilities but also a win/win for the consumers.If we take a step back and think about what is a farmer’s #1 problem ? What’s the media in TV, Newspapers, Blogs and social media keep debating and discussing about ? It has always been – fetching the highest price for their produce.
The focus on this single word “price” or “market” has been so maddening that farmers and the government both have stopped thinking beyond higher prices, MSP, subsidies eventually getting brain-dead to think about new ideas or Innovation in the agriculture sector per se.Its time the Agriculture Dept. of the country took a serious look at the archaic & now flawed Fertilizer Act & Pesticides Act. As an agrochemical company if you want to sell fertilizers, you need to be registered to sell in every state, have a local office address, a local warehouse, local VAT number, and finally hiring extra manpower. So imagine if you have a production unit in Maharashtra and want to expand your business by reaching out to farmers in another state – you will need – 10 offices, 10 warehouses,10 VAT registrations, 10 excise registrations – thats 10 times the manpower. The worst is tax returns, excise returns, PT, ESIC, Service Tax, various audits and inspections by various agencies increase 10 fold. Question is – how will the cost of an agro input like a fertilizer you produce or a Pesticide you make be affordable ?? This ultimately increases the cost of cultivation for the farmers and they in turn expect a fair and sustainable price for their produce.The second hindrance, our country certainly lacks infrastructure. Hence, neither an individual farmer reach the consumers neither an individual consumer reach the farmers.
As a company the fertilizer has to reach the farmer – for this a company uses a rather long supply chain model which goes :Company – C&F – Distributor – Retailer – FarmerAt every step there is a cost, a margin that is added by every intermediary to the price of the product which otherwise, if it was sold directly by the Company-to- Farmer would have saved the farmer anywhere between 25 to 50%. This is possible today with the last mile delivery made possible by the flood of courier companies erupted in the last 2 years.So if a farmers saves even 10% in cost of agri inputs – if the company can sell directly to him and get the last mile delivery correct – his cost of cultivation goes down. Then even if he fetches the same price that he present day does, his farm income has still increased and he has more money in his hands. More money in the hands of farmers is more money in 140 million hands to spend. This could change the face of our country forever.This Innovation in Agriculture if brought about by our government, this sector is opened up, if companies are freed from the license raj which till date exists, this ‘Direct Marketing to Farmers’ if allowed, could change the life of every farmer, making agriculture sustainable for him and his generations to come. The Youth will certainly wont quit farming.This one change if done, this innovation if brought about, old model if tweaked, can go long way in doubling a farmer’s income.- Purvish DiwanjiA Passionate Agriculture Enthusiast and also Director @ D2F
Why farmers should buy Agri Inputs from Direct2Farmer.com
We are not a startup. We are manufacturers of Plant Nutrition Products since 1979. Agri input Marketplaces are only modern day retailers.
1. We are not a startup. We are manufacturers of Plant Nutrition Products since 1979.
2. Being a manufacturer, we maintain strict quality standards and we have ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 quality certification.
3. All products covered under FCO 1985 adhere to it’s specifications.
4. We supply to leading brands in India who only repack our products and supply to farmers – Aries, Dayal, Multiplex, Nagarjuna, Coromandel, etc
5. We are serving over 25,000 farmers in Nashik alone since 2013.
6. We sell large volumes of our products in Grapes, Pomegranate and Banana – all of which are exported. Hence quality of Agri Inputs used are every farmer’s concern.
7. We import Water Soluble Fertilizers directly and make our own NPK 191919.
8. We have video testimonials on our YouTube channel for you to check our product performance history for last 5 years.
9. We have set up this e-retail platform to cut out the middlemen so our products can reach farmers directly at much lower prices.
10. We help every farmer win Agriculture by reducing cost of cultivation by upto 50% in many products.Read up “About Us” and “Our Story” on the website and blog for more details or give us a missed call on 022-39560561 to talk to us.
Our Story – Turning B2B to B2F, one farmer at a time.
You can never change the life of a farmer.Well that’s what everyone thinks. We only gasp reading the news of a farmer who committed suicide near your city and the next moment we are back to chatting up on WhatsApp or Facebook about the new restaurant that opened or the new iPhone that was launched.How many of us really do something For the Farmers ? But yes, eventually I did do something :)Born into a family business the words “You are born with a silver spoon” are not tough to come by from everyone you introduce yourself to. Its not wrong to say that joining the family business was an obvious choice for me while friends went for interviews and so I took the plunge into business at 20, just after Graduation. Though that lasted for 1 year exactly till I convinced myself that I need to learn how business is run and done professionally and pursued myself into an MBA.Once back into the business full-time the one thing that kept me going (and still keeps me awake) was my urge to do something For The Farmers. Questions kept coming back to me “How do I stop these suicides, How can I help Farmers make more money?, How do I reach out to them directly ? Can organic food be grown sustainably?”.
We have been manufacturing fertilizers since 1979 and haven been suppliers to many leading brands of India who just repack and sell at 4 to 5x times the price at which we sell to them. They justify it by their spending on people, advertisements, training, seminars, dealer meets etc – but is all of that required ? Some of it yes, some of it is just gimmickery after all.This made me start our retail operations in 2011 in Nashik and Sangli. We used the conventional way that Agri-input retail was done typically with a huge range of products, having a lavish team hired from MNCs, a big marketing spend and appointing C&F, distributors, dealers, retailers etc to ultimately reach the farmer. We kept our product pricing low in comparison to our competitors but then the “middle-men” had a party and our Business Model changed nothing For the farmers. Two years into retail in 2013, we saw a trend – we used to sell on a 12 month credit to the middle-men while the farmer paid them in cash, over the counter. Does it sound fishy ? It definitely sounded to me 🙂
The turning point for me was when a farmer in Nashik tells me why do you want retailers to sell to us, yeh dukaandar kyon chahiye ? just find a way to deliver products efficiently, build an app so I can order and pay online. He said the most important words that day -if you want your business to succeed, do good for the farmers, change their lives, then you have to build a business that’s For the Farmers, you have to be With the Farmers and the only way you can do this is by being selling Direct to Farmers.I decided we need to change how we do business because it was not making any sense to me or to our ultimate beneficiary – The Farmer. More so, it did not answer my nightmare question “How do I stop these suicides, How can I help Farmers make more money?, How do I reach out to them directly ? Can organic food be grown sustainably?”.That’s when we started talking to farmers about their needs, their payment cycle, their expectations from a model that would be called “Direct 2 Farmer”. We got a phenomenal response, I became a Door-2-Door salesman, carrying material in my car, delivering to each individual farmer and guess what – they paid me upfront. And why wouldn’t they ? Farmer were saving at least 30% compared to buying my products from a retail shop nearby.We hired guys to eventually run this door-delivery model and 2 years down the line we setup our e-commerce platform “Direct2Farmer.com” for convenience, transparency, understanding, ease of doing business For the Farmers, to be With the Farmers and more than anything being – Direct 2 Farmers.We sell over 300+ products, from 100ml to several thousand litres and ship from Kashmir to Kanyakumari covering over 20,000 pin-codes. Although we offer Conventional products of all types for mainline farming, we are focussed on “Regenerative Agriculture”. We offer Knowledge, Strategies, Services and Products to scale up this type of farming and ultimately make Regenerative Farming as Mainline.’ Regenerative Agriculture’ is opposite of Conventional one. It is, Good for the Soils,Good for the People,Good for the Planet,Good for the Farmer.We are talking about Farming that’s Good for Everyone…! We will continue to build this portfolio in our endeavours to reach out to the 140+ million farmers of India and make them all “Regenerative Farmers”.
If you are a Farmer and want to become a Regenerative Farmer then please download this simple to understand presentation on “Concepts of Regenerative Agriculture” by clicking on this link:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1o3CUksEW9UVfTdeZtadWi3W5PbPlC7iNTill then…purvish diwanji
For the Farmers, With the Farmers, Direct 2 Farmers
Email : purvish@direct2farmer.com
Twitter : @purvishdiwanjiInstagram
purvishdiwanjiBlog : direct2farmer.com/blog