Design an IoT enabled D2C E-Commerce Business Model for the Agricultural Supply Chain

International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation (IJRSI) | Volume VII, Issue VIII, August 2020 | ISSN 2321–2705

Design an IoT enabled D2C E-Commerce Business Model for the Agricultural Supply Chain

Ashiq MI¹, Raja Krishnamoorthy², Kaarthick Velumani³, Gregory Nannam⁴, Sandeep Padalikar⁵

¹Senior Consultant, Cognizant Technology Solutions, India
²Program Manager, Cognizant Technology Solutions, India
³Senior Technology Architect, Cognizant Technology Solutions, India
^4,5Functional Architect, Cognizant Technology Solutions, India

Abstract: Agriculturist face many challenges from producing the food crops until marketing. The conventional agricultural practices need revamping to provide quality food crops with optimized usage of water, bio nutrients and labor. The agriculturist in rural and remote areas lacks better monetary returns, since the local traders and intermediaries decide the prices for the farm produce. To meet the ever-growing demand and improve productivity, few farmers adopt artificial booster and additive usage. This poses a high risk on consumer’s health, since they are not aware of the origin, variety, pesticides and fertilizers used on the farm produce that is available in market. An attempt has been made to digitalize, a conventional agricultural supply chain for gaining better crop yield, cloud marketability, improved profit and provide a robust customer experience.

Keywords: IoT – Internet of Things, D2C – Direct to Consumer, E-Commerce – Electronic Commerce, CPG – Consumer Packaged Goods, API – Application Programming Interface

I. INTRODUCTION

Conventional farming systems share many characteristics like rapid technological innovation, large capital investments in order to apply production and management technology, large-scale farms, single crops/row crops grown continuously over many seasons, uniform high-yield hybrid crops, extensive use of pesticides, fertilizers, and external energy inputs, high labor efficiency and dependency on agribusiness. Philosophical underpinnings of industrial agriculture include assumptions like nature is a competitor to be overcome, progress requires unending evolution of larger farms and depopulation of farm communities, progress is measured primarily by increased material consumption, efficiency is measured by looking at the bottom line and science is an unbiased enterprise driven by natural forces to produce social good. Economic and social problems associated with agriculture are dependent on external economic and social pressures. Potential health hazards are tied to use of pesticide and nitrate contamination of water and food. [1] Farming situations present several respiratory hazards to farm workers. Exposure to these hazards has been linked to excessive coughing and congestion in 20 to 90 percent of farm workers and families. Contact dermatitis is a skin disorder that occurs among agricultural workers.

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