Farming in Indian history and culture has always been connected with soil. It has played an important role in feeding a nation, creating communities, and shaping the lives of millions of people. Nevertheless, the problems faced by agriculture today are unprecedented: irregularities in climate patterns, destruction of soil, shortage of water, and declines in land that can be cultivated.
Arvind Narayanan, the founder of Growize Farms, and his partners Pradeep Ram and Arun Holla viewed these numbers as more than just business statistics. For them, they represented the need for an innovative food production approach for the future.
What began as mere curiosity around the challenges faced by agriculture, particularly in India, led to the more far-reaching goal around the question of food sustainability especially when natural resources seem to be getting less predictable.
Are resources becoming unpredictable?
It is observed by Arvind and his colleagues from Growize that technology should not be viewed as a replacement of traditional farming methods but rather a way of keeping agriculture alive in future. Therefore, Growize farms, which specializes in controlledagriculture through aeroponics, was formed.
Forming another agritech company was not the intention of this journey. The purpose was to address a much bigger issue transversing the field of agriculture in India. A lot of farmers in India are grappling with the diminishing resources, unpredictable production, and uncertain climatic conditions related to farming in the region. The authors considered the role of different farming methods in increasing the resilience of this ecosystem before concluding that those would allow farmers to meet their needs while remaining dependent on conventional forms of agriculture for their food supply in India.
Currently, Growize Farms utilizes advanced farming technology to grow crops free of pesticide while consuming up to 95% less water than traditional practices. Their mission is to boost crop yield and prove that sustainable farming in large volumes can be profitable.
The story of Growize is interesting as it seeks to connect two fields which seem incompatible: farming and technology. While proposing a vision of the future where sustainable advancement of farming improves traditional methods of agriculture instead of fighting against them.
For Arvind, the broader aspect encompasses more than just the process of farming. It is about building a climate-resilient agricultural framework that will survive for future generations, cut wastage, save natural resources and rethink food production techniques closer to customers.
The growing trend of entrepreneurs trying to develop the innovative solutions to the old problems is being represented by Growize Farms, which has been active for more than 14 years in agri-tech R&D. According to its founders, the most crucial finding is the importance of combining both technology and tradition for further development of farming, rather than choosing one of them.