Harvesting Value from Data: Hariharan's Capstone Project on Optimizing Agricultural Practices

Interviewer:

Hi Hariharan, Good Evening!!! Thank you for joining me today for this series of the Best Capstone Projects. I would request you to give a brief introduction to our readers to start of this interview.

Hariharan:

Good Evening!!! Firstly I would like to thank you for giving me this wonderful opportunity to talk? about myself, the course and about the? Capstone Project. I am having 20+ years of experience in the field of Software development. I am currently working as a Software architect for one of the banking software development company Fiserv.? The product that I am currently working on is called ProfitVision which as the name suggests is an application used to measure the profitability of a particular bank at various levels like bank level, Enterprise level, product level, customer level and various officers levels. The application is primarily data driven where we receive data from Core and GL? and it used to process the data and? generate the profitability reports. That’s about me and my professional background. Coming to my educational background I have completed my MCA.

Interviewer:

Thank you for the brief Introduction. Moving on How did you learn about the BS Data Science Program, what was the motivation to enroll into this program considering the wealth of experience you possess? and when you look back at it what value addition do you see that this program has brought? for you personally?

Hariharan:

I learnt about the BS Data Science program offered by IIT Madras through the Newspaper and Ads on the Digital Platform.? One of the Tamil magazines had also published about this course; I believed that this course was interesting. I enrolled into this program and I have completed my Data Science Diploma. I am currently pursuing the programming side of the program and I wish to purse this course further. I have learnt a lot from this course, to be honest I had never explored anything beyond Microsoft Technology in the past.? For example I have been working on dot net for the last 10 to 15 years and I never explored anything beyond what was required for my job.? I was only focusing on upskilling and enhancing my knowledge within the domain I was working and whatever was required for me as a part of my job. But this program has given me an excellent opportunity to explore various tools like to unleash the map, to perform flourish, draw a lot of graphs. This gave me a lot of opportunities to explore the tools and even the Kaggle competition is something that I wouldn’t have participated hadn’t I enrolled into this program.?

A few of the subjects like Mathematics, when compared to what we studied in our academics which was affiliated to the State Boards, there used to be a questions at the end of the chapter and during the exams the questions would always come from the same book and due to this I had never explored anything beyond the questions in text book.

However, when I compare it to the course here, I have had to spend an additional 4 to 5 hours to thoroughly understand the concepts and then complete the assignment. Coming to Stats it was very challenging. When such graphs were presented in my organization I used to find them boring and never appreciated them as I was purely from a technical background.?

However, after attending the classes by Dr. Andrew, I started appreciating the subject.The BDM and Business Analytics courses have made this course very interesting,and now even if there is a graph in a newspaper it now? immediately attracts my attention and I am able to interpret it more easily now. The BDM Capstone team has always been available for providing guidance and the necessary feedback. Bharathi Ma’am has always been there throughout this entire program ensuring that it is going on very smoothly for all students like me. Enrolling into this program has been an enriching experience so far.

Interviewer:

Thank you for sharing these insights. Let us now move on to your BDM Capstone Project. If you could briefly elaborate on your project, how has the overall experience been?

Hariharan:

I must say that the Capstone Project has been a really challenging one. Before the start of the project when I had reviewed the credit for this project, I saw that this project has lower credits when compared to the other subjects; hence I was under the impression that this would be easier and took it a little lightly. However, when I started working on it, I realized that this is not as easy as it seems. Getting the data from the market was very challenging. I initially thought of doing this project with the neighbourhood mechanics who run their small businesses.? Whenever I had interacted with them, they used to talk about a lot of challenges and during the course of interaction they promised me to share the data. However, when I went back to them for getting the data, they started avoiding me. I also approached street side vegetable and fruit vendors. I interacted with them and recorded their transactions. I provided them with the books to log their transactions. Though they shared their problems but they were not keen on maintaining the transaction data and hence I couldn’t proceed even with this. I always had an inclination towards agricultural related project in my mind since whenever I visited my native I would interact with my neighbours who were into agriculture and though they were many initiatives from the Government in terms of free electricity, financial assistance in terms of subsidies and loans at lower interests and agriculture related workshop, they used to always complain about not having enough profits and due to this the family is not willing to continue in the agriculture business.

The feeling is such that whosoever is doing this is the last farmer. I started interacting with them and also started being there every weekend to understand the cultivation process. I used to try and understand the progress they were making and also attended a lot of trainings like zero budget natural farming workshop. One such session that I would like to mention here is the one conducted by Subhash Malekar workshop. This helped me understand the in and out process, what is being thought there and what practices are being presently followed. I very soon realized that though there are a lot workshops and practices being shared, most of our farmers are illiterate and hence are not able to benefit out of this as there was a significant gap in the knowledge transfer. When my interactions with these farmers increased I realized that though they didn’t have data in a documented format but they had all the expenditures at their fingertips and they were more than happy to share this information. This inspired me further to work with them. Though, I come from an agriculture background myself, I had very little knowledge regarding agriculture since I was not actively involved.

I then started working with the farmers, spent several days interacting with them collecting and recording the expenses and understanding their challenges. I also visited the agriculture office and interacted with several officials. I also visited the district headquarters of the farmers market to interact with the farmers selling their produce there.

Once my mid-term project was approved I had to visit? agriculture marketing office, sugar factory to try and get the last 5 years data points which I used in my final project. This took a lot of time, I spent almost 2 months doing this exercise. I presented this in my final project. It was a very challenging experience and at the same time a learning experience. I am really happy that I could identify the solution to the problem and right now even though my project is completed I am still in touch with the farmers, as right now they are experimenting the findings with some other crop. I am talking to them to use the some of the natural farming techniques. I am encouraging them to attend the natural farming technique workshops that happen within the districts and I too demonstrate how to create these natural manures whenever I go visit them.

To just share a small piece of insight of the benefits of these trainings, there are actually 14 kinds of manures that you can prepare on your own without the use of any chemicals or pesticides. Since I have attended these workshops I now know how to prepare these manures. Whenever they have queries, they now reach out to me if they are stuck or when they feel it is not working the way it should. I am happy that I am able to help them in these aspects. Most probably in the next year if the rainfall is good and the sugarcane cultivation is happening, I will be periodically working with them to see the results of the findings that I have mentioned in my project report.?

Interviewer:?

Those were some great insights and it was quite inspiring. For the benefit of our readers it would be wonderful if you could share some insights around the approach and analysis related to this project.

Hariharan:

Yes, definitely! So to explain this I will break into 2 sections the 1st section will be the approach and the 2nd will be the analysis section.?

The approach included Data Collection, Data Cleaning and Tool selection for analysis

When we talk about the data collection we should be clear of the data we intend to collect and also the Meta data for each data collection item. Data cleaning becomes an important activity in any analysis. The data received from the farmers was raw, as I was clear with the data collection items and the Meta data; it helped me clean up the data as required. I approached the farmer for the missing data which were needed for the analysis. The regular communication with the farmer also helped a lot. The next important step for any analysis is selection of the right methodology which is apt for achieving the end result. Hence, I first categorized the expenses into Value Added Expenses, Non-Value Added Expenses, Essential Non-Value Added Expenses. I also analysed the purchase rates, the 5 year historical trend. I used Qualitative analysis techniques like brainstorming and discussion to understand the land and land utilization details. I used the 5 why’s technique to identify the root cause of quality issues like the produce quality, packaging and delivery quality.?

Now to give some insights around the analysis part, my analysis for this project is categorized in 5 major parts which I will share in detail

• Expense Data Analysis:?To reduce the cost for the farmer, I needed to understand the expense categories. Hence, I discussed with farmer and categorized the expenses into (a) Various types to understand where the costs were spent and (b) VA-NVA-ENVA categories to understand where costs can be reduced where VA is Value Added which cannot be avoided, NVA is Non-Value Added which can be avoided and ENVA is Essential Non-Value Added which can be reduced. This categorization & analysis and preparing Pie chart out of this information, helped to conclude that 96% of total expenses can be reduced further. Also, this helped to explore further the alternate cost-effective methods and techniques.

• Yield data analysis:?As the goal of the Project was to Increase ROI & Yield for the farmer, it was important to understand the land performance i.e., if the Yield is in increasing mode or decreasing mode. Hence, I created a Trend chart for the past 5 years data and noticed that it’s not an increasing Trend year after year. Rather, it is unpredictable, and Yield is currently in decreasing mode. This analysis helped to explore further on how to improve the land performance (yield). Also, Expected Yield Vs Actual Yield for the past 5 years was calculated to understand the Actual Yield compared to State Agriculture University recommendations. Based on this I also understood that ROI is way less compared to what farmer should have achieved. Trend analysis of Income, Expense & Profit for past 5 years also helped to understand that Income and Profit are in decreasing trend whereas the expenses are in increasing trend.?

• Soil Health analysis: It was highly important to understand Soil Health, as Quality of the Produce and Yield depends on Soil Health. To understand affecting factors, Five-Why analysis technique was used to understand the Root Causes. Based on the root causes, action plan was derived and shared with farmer to improve Soil Health. ?

• Land Details and Land Utilization:?I had done brainstorming session with farmer to understand the details of land and how the land has been utilized for farming. I collected information on Land Area, Crops grown in the past 5 years, Type of farming, Soil Type, Crops tried earlier, Water Sources, Other Sources, Land utilization etc., This helped me to understand the land better and provide suitable recommendations to the farmer.

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• SWOT?analysis:? SWOT anlaysis was done to get an overall picture to represent the Results & Findings summary in an organized manner.

Interviewer:

Thank you Hariharan. Thank you for taking out some time and sharing these insights with us. I wish you all the very best for the rest of your course and I am hopeful we get to see some positive results out of your findings that are being implemented by the farmers, which can benefit them. Capstone projects like these really contribute and make a difference to the society.

Hariharan:

Thank you and have a great day ahead.