Reflective Document

Building agriculture resilience through proposed Government funded technology-based Non-Profit Organization for the betterment of livelihoods of agrarians.

Introduction:

A natural calamity by its name is much capable of affecting in a multifold scale ranging from immediate to later effects. The severity of the affects can take years to recover and sometimes it can never be recovered.

The recent floods in Kerala is one such happening which shook the state to its core. Apart from the death of close to 450 people, the calamity had caused destruction in livelihoods, agriculture, emotions and businesses.

Choosing a subject as such for the Transdisciplinary course was an interesting area to deal with. The involvement of people from various courses was one of the interesting focus of the studio.

From the classroom discussions to the onsite exploration, it was an interesting journey to look back to.

People from other domains, different background and experiences in a single studio is a great experience. Our thoughts, our vision, our perspective will be different. I had got more insights on Kerala floods through the whole discussions. The discussion happened in the studio about landscape broadened my perception. While discussing about disaster I felt disaster could be human centric because we defined the word ‘disaster’.

I was introduced to the Field Guide for the first time and I was excited to design our Field Guide. While making our field guide gained brief knowledge about Wayanad and its various aspects. As individual and group interested in different forms of art and culture we started mapping about our focus area and decided to research on Culture. Affinity mapping activity broadened the idea and perception of the individual goals and need of on-field research, etc. Discussions and activities happened in the studio led to development and construction of vision statement. By Deepta’s session realized how to become insider, how to observe without judgement, how to be a localite, connection building, etc.

Primary Research

Discussion with Sumesh:

• While Sumesh was discussing about youth and education, he mentioned Wayanad is backward in education system. But I feel tourism may be the main reason for this. Most of the youths in Urban area are involved in tourism.
• Women empowerment and women as breadwinner in the field of tourism.
• Tourism is secondary source of income for farmers and agriculturists
• Livelihood is affected and disturbed due to floods and disaster.
• Typical tourism is moving towards experience tourism.
• Introduction of new policies helps in rebuilding the livelihood.
• Introduction of new technology and design in community tourism will help urbanites.

Field Visit — Kottathara

• I had a different perception of flood affected area, but it was not like that. People were normally working, enjoying with their talks, chit-chatting.
• Found many destroyed and damaged banana plantation but interesting thing was few of the plants were re-growing.
• Tall trees like areca nut and rubber wood trees are not much affected.
• Even after the major flood and loosing many of the plantation people are still working on farming. This shows agriculture is the primary source of income.
• While discussing with Bindu Chechi got to know that she supplies crops to local market and district headquarters for lesser than market price.

Field Visit — Pancharakolli & Vengapally

• When I first saw the landscape I couldn’t recognize the landslide area. Then I went ahead. I started observing landslide area. Many of us started sinking in the unstable soil. Rescuing was a big task.
• Then I started observing destroyed trees, houses, roads and small bridges.
• Self rescuing was a big task for us, imagine the whole big part of the land slided on the houses, trees and plantation.
• I met localites and witness of the incident there. I started understanding their feelings — they don’t have home to stay, some people doesn’t have area for agriculture, they don’t have proper road.
• Person who I met was telling government is just giving assurance for us but they are not doing anything.
• Livelihood of the farmers community is dramatically affected due to flood and landslides. Some have become emotionally and psychologically weak. I understood that we have to work on betterment and development of their livelihood in a quicker way. We have to identify a new agricultural workplace for them.
• After a detailed discussion with Mr. Sumesh and panchayat members, I realised that farmers need economic support to cultivate paddy and how community farming really works.
• Realised how Packaging of a agricultural products like coffee, pepper and cardamom, etc. plays a important role in sales and marketing. It demonstrates its trustworthiness and brandcredibility, etc. (Due to lack of financial support Kutumbashri is not able to promote their products with good packaging)
• Realised farmers are using internet enabled smartphones for buying goods from amazon and calling through Whatsapp.
• Realised tourism can be alternative and secondary source of income for farmers.

Field Visit — Thanal

• Agriculture is dependent on soil, weather, fertilizer
• With the natural waste like neem leaves, cow dung, cow urine, boan powder we can prepare organic fertilizer and manure.
• With all the conversation with Thanal members realised that monocrop is very risky and dangerous for farmers. If the crop fails no income.
• Farmers doesn’t want to participate in post-harvesting process.
• Use of dried cow dung doesn’t help as fertilizer.
• Organic products are premium products… its healthy… but low class people can’t afford

Field Visit — WAMP

• Use of digital technology can improve Organically produced agro products sales
• Technology can help to find authenticity of organically produced agro goods
• Agriculture training has to be given to secondary school children to develop and build self-interest among themselves

Ideation Process

• Mind Mapping: After writing down how I felt about the floods and how agricultural ways can be improvised I felt there is a significant need of helping farmers to recover from it.
• Persona Mapping: It helped me in identifying the traits of people and for whom I would like to design a solution. I was trying to deal with challenges like Economic support, stability of income, market reach, and minimum guarantee return on investment, transportation and logistics, expert advice, education on agriculture practices.
• Online Survey: It helped me to understand people’s view on my project and gave me insights about how crowd sourcing will help and what role can government policies play if they are effectively utilized.
• Value proposition and business model: This is where the system level thinking was much needed to identify the stake holders, pain and gain of the system and other key aspects. To actually assimilate the information and to envision how it would act as a working model was an interesting task. A lot of thought process went to make the canvas.
• Stakeholder Map: The connections between the involved entities and their working was interesting to note, this was the foundation for the business model. Lot of unseen factors could be mapped through this charts like infrastructure and agents.

System Design

This was the collaborated results of all the information and mapping. The strategy model and the journey process helped to envision the flow of the system through various scenarios. The farmer initiated process flow acted as a foundation for me to design the prototype and to identify necessary details to consider while creating it.

The wireframes gave clarity on the layout and type of components which can be used while making the high fidelity prototype. Theme selection and color pallet identification was interesting task to think about.

Working on the micro details and exact match of the elements with the design was a challenging task. Each design had to compliment the others and the overall idea. After efforts of iterations, rework and perfection, the app design matched with what I wanted it to reflect. It was a standout artifact of my entire work, which gave an accomplishment feeling of the entire journey.