Intervention of technology revolutionizes egg farm operations

Technology intervention in the poultry sector has been very minimal, and hence there is a huge scope of digitization of the entire value chain. Right from bird management to the supply chain, the use of technology can bring about many value addition and positive changes. Digitization of the value chain will help provide traceability of the products and a much more efficient supply chain. With Data science, we can offer better conditions for the birds and provide predictive insights to mitigate livestock-related risks.

Today egg farming industry where the milk industry was 20 years ago. There are many start-ups in the dairy space that are empowering the farmers and the farm operations through technology. India is a country where both traditional and modern farming practices are very much intertwined. Despite the advancements in the dairy industry, the farmers are facing a lot of challenges. One can only imagine the kind of challenges faced by the egg farmers of the country where technology has made no entry yet. Agritech start-ups have to make great strides in uplifting rural farmers in India. From driving on-farm efficiency, upskilling smallholder farmers at village level to increasing farmer income, there’s a long way for us to go.

Data from these farms also help build a trustworthy traceable value chain that will develop consumer trust and enhances customer experience. With the help of image processing technologies and machine learning, we can develop a technology to identify diseases in birds just by scanning with a smartphone. This would help farmers identify early signs and mitigate large-scale losses and keep the flock healthy.

With a synergistic integration of hardware and software at the farm level, farmers can unlock immense value in data visibility, predictive insights, and actions, thereby ensuring a healthier environment for the birds and better earnings.

The minimum viable egg farm size in India is 10,000 birds that typically requires an investment of Rs 80 to 90 lakh. Because of this fact, the farms have also been majorly run by big farmers and businessmen. One major reason for this is the elevated design of the farm that helps in ventilation for bird litter being collected daily. In most cases, the litter mountains are not cleared for the entire flock cycle, which is 18 to 20 months, which leads to harmful greenhouse gases like ammonia.

Imagine a way we can bring commercial egg farming to small and marginal farmers who can rear a flock of 500 to 5000 birds. As we all know that Indian agriculture is largely dependent on small and marginal farmers. They are the ones who currently cannot do egg farming due to the present Capex heavy farm design. With the help of the aforementioned technological advances and interventions, this can be executed at a smaller scale, and when that happens - Egg farming would bring about another White Revolution in India and contribute significantly to egg production as well as farmer income.

Abhishek Negi is chief executive officer and co-founder of Eggoz. Protein and technology are at the core of his interests. Abhishek left a cushy corporate job to start a cab aggregating company as his first venture, which did not do very well. While exploring options, he understood that technology penetration in a space like agriculture is minimal and has a huge potential in a country like India. Hence, he decided to continue his start-up journey by cofounding an agritech company Eggoz in the egg protein space and his batchmates, who also hailed from agricultural families.