THIS IS NOT A CASE OF LAY’S, THE POTATO CHIP BRAND.

THIS IS ABOUT LAY’S, AN AGRICULTURE COMPANY.

Potato farmers are the reason why Lay’s exists. We are the largest partner of potato farmers in India; 25 years of relationship with over 27,000 farming families, across 37,600 acres of farmlands.

Lay’s potato is patented chip-grade which can only be grown by our farmers two times a year. If the supply drops, it takes at least 6 months before potatoes are processed and brought to market. Creating a bottle neck of supply.

 The Problem

OUR BUSINESS HINGES ON A STEADY POTATO SUPPLY. BUT GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS CROP; AFFECTING PREDICTABLE OUTPUT.

86% Indian farmers practice traditional agri-practices tied to predictable seasonal patterns. Climate-change induced un-seasonality has made this traditional knowledge irrelevant, leading to $5.6Bn crop loss and destruction of 69Mn hectares agri-land since 2015.

LAY’S FARMERS WERE LOSING 20% OF CROP ANNUALLY TO CLIMATE CHANGE, CREATING SUPPLY-CHAIN INEFFICIENCIES.

In face of growing demand- 13% volume CAGR- and mounting local competition, yield drop was threatening business.

 The Discovery

COMBATING CLIMATE UNPREDICTABILITY NEEDS SWIFT ACTION. BUT HIGH FRAGMENTATION OF INDIAN FARMLANDS MAKES THIS IMPOSSIBLE.

An average U.S farm is 445 acres. The average Indian farm is just 2.6 acres; further fragmented into smaller land-parcels- a 105% increase in number of land-parcels but 52% decrease in their average size since 1978.

Indian farmers work on multiple land-parcels spread over distances of 20 kilometres; making every day monitoring, humanly impossible.

TO FUTURE PROOF OUR BUSINESS WITH ASSURED PRODUCE; WE HAD TO REINVENT OUR AGRI-CHAIN BY TRANSFORMING THE WAY FARMERS ‘DO' AGRICULTURE.

 The Challenge

Not leaving farmers alone after irreplaceable damage, we had to reduce their response-time to climate crisis.

WE COULDN’T CONTROL CLIMATE OR LAND FRAGMENTATION. SO, HOW COULD WE SIMPLIFY LAND-MONITORING TO ENHANCE CLIMATE-RESILIENCE?

 The Solution

OUR BREAKTHROUGH MOMENT CAME FROM FARMERS THEMSELVES.

Decades-old farmer partnership gave us access to unique historical data of every single crop about yield, soil health, fertilizers, pesticides, water usage, and crop diseases.

OPENING UP OPPORTUNITY TO DIGITIZE EVERY CROP TO A PIXEL LEVEL THROUGH MACHINE LEARNING.

Thus, simplifying manual land-monitoring by transforming it into real-time algorithmic monitoring.

 The Execution

We developed ‘Smart Farm’- a real-time monitoring system to generate early-warnings and actionables before irreplaceable crop damage.

We partnered with Agtech platform Cropin’ and trained the AI with +4 years of historical intelligence of +3000 hectares of farms. Converging it with satellite imagery, weather forecast and time, Smart Farm analyses factors affecting growth at crop, plot and pin code level.

- DEMOCRATISING DATA FOR FARMERS BY MAKING IT ILLITERACY PROOF

Smart Farm simplifies big data analyses as colour-codes to farmers through a smartphone accessible platform.

- HUMAN CAPABILITY MEETS MACHINE LEARNING

Cutting through the rural mistrust on technology, a robust network of our agronomists onboards farmers, verifies early warnings alerts and helps implement actionable.

This strategic intervention has not only stabilized our supply chain but also positioned Lay’s as a leader in agricultural innovation.