Pitch
Making healthy nutritious supplements easy even in places where there is no soil or is uncultivable.
Description
Summary
To address the issue of land availability and lack of sustainability in farming
• Self sufficient farming: Reducing dependency on very little cultivable land
• Reducing the burden: By avoiding large scale farming by poor farmers
• Retain fertility of Soil: Continuous cultivation and nature of soil makes the soil infertile
• Resistance towards indoors soil hassles
• Growing concern about the ill-effects of powerful pesticides
• Radical shift towards organic products
• Increasing demand for good quality and healthy produce
• Lack of awareness of the composition of pesticides and other agricultural methods
used for farming
People have no other option rather than to continue eating the vegetables/fruits
which are high on pesticides and chemicals
What actions do you propose?
Science: Soil-less Cultivation
• Technologies : Hydroponics ( water ) , Aeroponics ( Air/environment ) and
Media Culture ( solid substrate )
• Hydroponics Usage : 95%
Drawback : Sunlight does not reach the roots
• Aeroponics Usage : 4%
Drawback : Costly, Set-up extensive
• Media Culture: less than 1%
This is a system in which crops are planted on solid substrate rather than on soil and nutrients are added to the media. The entire world plans to move towards this concept from hydroponics and aeroponics
• Plants grow on media other than soil as far as they are getting the
right amount of sunlight, nutrients, water content, aeration,
minerals, pH value etc.
• We have identified components/constituents that individually show properties same as what the soil shows
• Using a couple of components together in the right proportion so as to provide the best possible growth is our key.
• Sustenance Carpet would be one of the few solutions which will offer end to end solution like mentoring to identify potential buyers for the substrate products. The solution would follow a phase wise approach by winning the confidence of Agro scientists, get approval from Agricultural department and participate in Agri Fairs in Phase 1. In Phase 2, the solution would approach panchayat leaders with the idea , use agriculture students to drive the Campaign name in villages, approach NGO’s that work towards developing farmers and the spread the word by installing stalls in village fairs so that farmers will take up substrate cultivation as as one of their methods. In phase 3, “Sustenance Carpet family” program will be started and families will be made to enroll in it, each family with same expectattions would be assigned a corresponding Sustenance Carpet representative, Sustenance Carpet champion will be selected every 45 days and awarded cash prize.
Who will take these actions?
• Sustenance Carpet would follow a three tier approach in executing the project, different Sustenance Carpet families are linked together through Farmer networks that will provide them the substrate to start the culture. The farmer networks would comprise of farmers from different villages and different Sustenance Carpet families. Different farmer networks are then governed by the Sustenance Carpet head.
• Sustenance Carpet after gaining strong foothold in the area of Hydroponics would look to scale up it’s offerings by introducing Sustenance Carpet Lighting Solutions, Sustenance Carpet Aquaponics Solutions, Sustenance Carpet Home Gardening Solutions and Sustenance Carpet Warehouse Farming Solutions.
Where will these actions be taken?
• Target Audience Age Group : 15+ years URBAN – Urban Population : 40% of Indian Population
a) Urban people in cities and towns.
b) People in concrete living places with no soil around
c) Modern housewives
RURAL - This has two purposes a) Roof top vegetation – Cooling their homes – Improve rural lifestyle/Cheaper fashion lifestyle : Grow day to day healthy consumable vegetables on roof tops, which will make their huts and look green on top, looks better and shows a sign of improved lifestyle.
b) FUTURE PLAN: Lands that are not cultivable or are having a very low produce
How much will emissions be reduced or sequestered vs. business as usual levels?
To mitigate Nitrous Oxide (N2O) emissions derived from Nitrogen (N) fertilizer of agro ecosystems, establishment of best management protocols for cultivation is necessary and sustenance carpet is indeed the best ssolutions available.
What are other key benefits?
• Generate employment by setting up a proper manufacturing/production unit
• Serves the agricultural needs and brings in a new dimension to cultivation
• Taking a step ahead of Hydroponics
• Making Soil-less cultivation easy and cheap and making it possible for every commoner.
What are the proposal’s costs?
There is a strong demand – Questionnaire Survey and the latest trends give us a concrete proof to move ahead with the idea in India.
• The market size covers the entire urban population i.e 40% of Indian Population with scopes of percolating the idea over to the rural areas as well. The domestic market for organic products was estimated at Rs 1,000 crore (or approximately 190 million US $) in 2011-12, and is expected to grow to 1 billion US $ by 2015.
• This is an untapped market segment. With a new product one of its kinds giving a new dimension to the implementation of science behind hydroponics will make it a monopoly in the league.
Time line
• Sustenance Carpet would be one of the few solutions which will offer end to end solution like mentoring to identify potential buyers for the substrate products. The solution would follow a phase wise approach by winning the confidence of Agro scientists, get approval from Agricultural department and participate in Agri Fairs in Phase 1. In Phase 2, the solution would approach panchayat leaders with the idea , use agriculture students to drive the Campaign name in villages, approach NGO’s that work towards developing farmers and the spread the word by installing stalls in village fairs so that farmers will take up substrate cultivation as as one of their methods. In phase 3, “Sustenance Carpet family” program will be started and families will be made to enroll in it, each family with same expectattions would be assigned a corresponding Sustenance Carpet representative, Sustenance Carpet champion will be selected every 45 days and awarded cash prize.
Related proposals
Current Proposals:
• Indirect Linkages: Traditional Farming
• Direct Linkages: Hydroponics, Aeroponics, other variant of media culture
References
http://www.instructables.com/id/Hydroponics---at-Home-and-for-Beginners
http://aerofarms.com/why/technology
http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2015/2015/hydro_agriculture.html
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