UPL, a global agricultural solutions company based in Mumbai, India, offers sustainable farming solutions through crop protection products and seed treatments while also using digital platforms to provide agricultural support and services. In Maharashtra, UPL’s Shashwat Mithaas (Sustainable Sugar Programme) is addressing the challenges faced by various stakeholders in the sugar industry, including farmers, sugar mills and sugar purchasers. Farmers are struggling with increasing farming costs without corresponding yield improvements, while sugar mills face shortages of sugarcane from their catchment areas, impacting their profitability. Additionally, sugar purchasers seek sustainable procurement from sugar mills but lack traceability in the supply chain. UPL brings together these stakeholders and offers interventions that address these issues. The programme implements seven key interventions: 1. Good agricultural practices (GAPs) 2. Implementation support of GAPs 3. Pronutiva, a product that integrates biosolutions with conventional crop protection inputs 4. Digitalization for end-to-end traceability and insurance for covering the risk of farming 5. Mechanization 6. Market linkage to ensure right value to produce 7. Carbon credits to ensure returns on sustainable agriculture To ensure greater uptake of these services, the programme focuses on building women’s capacity across all seven intervention areas. Women are heavily involved in the daily operations of sugarcane farming and handle critical tasks requiring skill, such as preparing nurseries, transplanting seedlings, applying fertilizers and harvesting, while men typically engage in more physically demanding labour, such as ploughing and spraying. The programme’s focus on working with women farmers has been highly impactful. One example has been the training provided to women setting up sugarcane nurseries. These nurseries require precise skills in selecting quality sugarcane plants, treating them correctly and caring for them until they are uprooted after 45 days. This technique reduces seed costs by $54 per acre and improves crop survival rates by 30%, significantly boosting profitability for farmers. Besides customized training, intentionally selecting educated women to be a part of the programme has also driven success. UPL’s programme currently spans a 25,000-acre catchment area for various sugar mills in Maharashtra, with notable impact on over 2,000 acres predominantly managed by women farmers.CASE STUDY 4 Shashwat Mithaas (Sustainable Sugar Programme) by UPL, India 2. Consider women’s needs while implementing awareness and training programmes: Awareness and training programmes are crucial for educating users on technology solutions and their use. When organizing these programmes at the grassroots level, it is important to account for factors such as timing and location. In many rural areas, women may miss out due to their distance from the venue, inconvenient timings or household responsibilities. By considering these factors and scheduling programmes at accessible times and locations, participation rates among women can be significantly improved. Recommendation 5: People By increasing the presence of women in these frontline roles, companies can enhance their outreach and build more inclusive, effective relationships with diverse farming communities, especially women. The following strategies can be adopted: 1. Organize training and capacity-building programmes: Limited digital literacy is a key barrier to women farmers adopting agritech. To overcome this barrier, businesses can partner with existing training and capacity- building programmes run by non-profits and governments to integrate modules related to digital literacy. Such literacy programmes can also be delivered via pre-competitive collaboration frameworks between multiple agritech service providers, as they will systematically build demand across use cases. Agritech for Women Farmers: A Business Case for Inclusive Growth 23

Agritech for Women Farmers 2024