How to reduce the ever-expanding practice of crop residue burning across SE Asia?
Design Mentorship to Energy Harvest as part of the Cisco CSR Initiative in partnership with The/Nudge Foundation
Sukhmeet Singh, Founder & CEO, Energy Harvest
Dr. Robert Berry, Director — Grants & Partnership, Energy Harvest
Rakesh Sharma: Sr. Design Strategist, Cisco
Bharath G — UI Designer, Cisco
As a part of the Cisco Design Community, we feel fortunate to get opportunities to apply our design skills to solve problems with a wider social impact. One such opportunity is mentoring social startups incubated through The/Nudge Foundation and Cisco CSR Initiative. Cisco CSR Initiative partners with the Nudge foundation on a cohort basis to extend expert mentorship to its incubating Social startups. Unaware of the pandemic, February 2020, for me, started with the excitement of working with Energy Harvest, an amazing social startup, building energy solutions out of crop residue to enable farmers and decrease the adverse environmental impact of farming, specifically in India and South-East Asian region.
Energy Harvest is building technology solutions to increase farmer's income, and reduce air pollution by recycling crop residue for energy generation. And one of the many challenges it faces is the arduous task of creating a healthy marketplace that enables, encourages, and connects farmers looking for ways to eliminate crop residue. On the other hand, they also aspire to make it easier for power consumers looking for ways to fulfill their energy requirements to get access to fuel-efficient crop residue, e.g., rice straw.
Why is this problem space important?
In 2008–09 India generated 620 million tons of crop residue, of which close to 16% was burnt on farms. This is based on a study by the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) done in 2014. We hear the air quality across North India, especially NCR starts degrading drastically during every harvest season from October, November, and December. A major contributor to this degradation is crop residue burning in adjacent farm areas of Punjab and Haryana. And it seems this problem is present across the SE Asian Region, as crop residue burning is a usual, age-old, and cheapest way of getting rid of farm waste like straw. This problem is compounded by the fact that farmers have a very narrow window to move from harvesting current crops to sowing new crops.
The challenge is unique. Farming is a long process that goes cyclically throughout the year, divided into two sub-cycles of Kharif and Rabi crops with a specific time of harvesting each of them.
Based on the analysis in references, Punjab alone burns 80% of the approximately 20 million tons of rice straw produced. And this is even though wheat straw has much more use down the stream, like fodder for cattle, tuning in fuel, etc. This is compounded by the fact that the farmers have a very short window of approximately 21 days to get rid of the waste straw from rice and sow the next round of crops. Unless it’s a big farmer or not close to a highway, the government does not have effective mechanisms to stop the farmers from burning the straw to get rid of it. Many times, they are actually ready to get rid of the straw for free.
As mentioned earlier, this crop residue burning practice has long-term repercussions for the people living in the region. Across the North Indian belt, residents of major cities from New Delhi to Lucknow get exposed to dangerously high pollutants through the air they breathe. The worst part is the long-term effects it has year on year on our youngsters — Our future. About 620,000 premature deaths occurred in India from diseases related to air pollution in 2010, a six-fold increase in 2000.
Any design intervention that can address the issues appears to be a unique opportunity to improve the quality of life for tens and thousands of people in the region. Being true entrepreneurs and problem solvers, Mr. Singh and Mr. Berry have identified this doom and gloom situation as a great opportunity. According to the study and partnership with next-generation fuel industries, Energy Harvest knows this unwanted crop residue can turn into an energy-efficient fuel if processed properly. The same agriculture belt also has many paper and sugar mills with a high demand for cheap power. Therefore, it became a natural first step for Energy Harvest to create a marketplace mechanism by matching the straw demand and supply. And in turn, looking for ways to improve the air quality across our major cities and improve our future generation prospects.
People and their challenges in context to creating a crop residue marketplace.
Like with any complex problem, there are multiple people involved through the process of collecting straw from the farmer, storing it in between, and then supplying it to the right person, just in time.
Individual/Small Farmer and Farmer Entrepreneurs: Farmers are focused on sowing and harvesting the crop. Crop residue is a side effect and needs to be dealt with. In the context of crops residue management, farmers need to communicate the way in advance, their harvesting times, and the quantity of straw available for the collectors to collect this season. It could be for a specific price or free. At present, they mostly achieve this through the phone, by simple calls and messages. That is if they have enough time and resources to sell it to the collectors.
Procurement managers in Power Plants, Other Processing Units are always looking to procure raw material satisfying their power needs. They want to keep track of their demand, make sure it is met at all times. Based on their unit’s procedures, they may want to store the straw at their own facility or hire intermediaries to store and supply as and when needed.
Collectors are intermediaries and can be the same person. Their main focus is on the optimization of effort, material, and time. Collectors have access to people and equipment specialized in collecting, processing, storing, and supplying straw within a specific area.
Warehouse owners as collectors are intermediaries who rent the space to store straw safely. And this could be in the form of a service provided to collectors and procurement managers. Many times a collector himself could also offer this service to a power plant/processing unit nearby. Their main focus is to make sure space is used optimally, and the straw is coming in and going out as frequently as possible.
Although the whole problem space revolves around ways to enable a market-place between the above mentioned 4 groups of people, to create a positive tension between the demand of straw and optimum supply of the same, we want to focus on the activity of buying and selling more than the varied needs of these groups.
We define “Buyer” as a person who wants to procure straw. A buyer also could be represented by Procurement Managers in power plant/processing units, Collectors, or Wharehouse owners.
Buyer challenges:
- How do I get access to all the nearby sellers?
- How do I decide which seller will be best for my requirement?
- How do I keep in touch with the seller?
I am anxious and want to track the supply throughout the lifecycle of meeting the straw's demand. - How do I make sure I am requesting just the right quantity?
- How do I keep my superiors informed about the stock?
On the other hand, anyone who has straw in stock and wants to get rid of it is defined as a “Seller.” A seller could range from a small individual farmer, a big farmer, a collector, or a warehouse owner.
Seller challenge:
- How do I get access to demands raised by nearby buyers?
- How do I decide if I have enough stock to fulfill the requirement?
- How do I remember how much straw is delivered vs. how much was requested? As these engagements are recurring and long term.
- How do I inform the buyers if there is a glitch, and I need to pause or modify the agreed supply in between?
How did we approach this opportunity?
Approximately 5 months of deep-dive sessions almost every week with Robert & Sukhmeet, I was involved as a Cisco CSR appointed Design Mentor for Energy Harvest. These focused discussions helped us learn and understand quite a bit about the practical crop residue management problems farmers face and some intriguing ideas to solve these problems from social and technological ends. The whole engagement was an enriching experience.
Early in the process, it was clear that the challenge is complex and would need more than a deep dive into this topic to do justice with any design intervention. Organically, our working sessions started focusing on visualizing the context, which later morphed into identifying the high impact opportunities and user flows. During the later phase, Bharath G., an aspiring UI designer, extended his help designing detailed screens for this project.
Frameworks used included creating an experience map, defining information architecture, basic building blocks, user stories, and user flows in prototypes.
Experience Map
With the clear articulation of the journey across one cycle of farming, we defined steps on a timeline, mapped people involved, and plausible opportunities while collecting straw. This helped us reframe the problem to focus on the most impactful fundamental area of creating sustainable demand. The final reframed problem statement transformed into
How might we make sure the flow between the seller and the buyer of the straw becomes sticky with the least friction when right now the market itself doesn’t exist, and farmers are left with no choice other than letting the collectors take straw for free or burn it?
Key User Stories
We focused on a few key high impact user stories exploring possible solutions
User Stories — Buyer
- A buyer needs to raise a request for the straw it needs and select a set of sellers with who they want to interact.
- A buyer needs information about the consumption of straw across time, which is only visible personally to the buyer and can be shared or downloaded.
- A buyer needs a mechanism to update the quantity received so that the buyer and seller have the same information.
- A buyer can rate the seller. The reputation of both buyer and seller is calculated based on a predefined set of parameters (rating from the seller, promptness of payment, volume, etc.)
- A buyer can commit the purchase to be referred to as an agreement with the seller and has access to a complete lifecycle with a start, pause, modification, and end.
User Stories — Seller
- A seller needs to receive, view, and accept/reject a request for the straw from the buyer based on their own capability.
- A seller needs information about the delivery schedule, the buyer’s acceptance of already delivered straw, and billing information.
- A seller can rate the buyer. The reputation of both buyer and seller is calculated based on a predefined set of parameters (rating from the seller, promptness of payment, volume, etc.)
- A seller can commit to the selling to be referred to as an agreement with the buyer and has access to the complete lifecycle with a start, pause, modification, and end.
We derived the main user flow from the above user stories, which would depict the overall concept in totality. It helped us articulate the key building blocks a user would require and the navigation between them.
Interaction flow
These building blocks were further detailed into Interaction flows for the users as listed below. The flows we covered depicted the creation of a new request for a requirement of straw by a buyer. Which in turn would go as a request to a set of selected sellers. The seller would accept or modify the proposal and only once both are in synch is the order in motion.
Using the platform will have an added advantage for the buyer as they will be able to view their power usage pattern and predict their requirement way in advance.
Next steps
Although the concept is quite detailed, we would like to make sure that this addresses the farmer and straw buyers' exact need on Ground Zero. So the obvious next steps would be to take these concepts and designs to a few actual users and validate our assumptions.
Best validation starts with a clear articulation of assumptions, as listed below.
- Reports have the exact information most of the buyers may need
- Creation flow is clear and easy to use
- Key stages across the life cycle of the order are captured and addressed.
Call for Action
In case the topic excites you and/or you can help us build this platform, please do reach out to the co-founders of Energy Harvest.
Sukhmeet Singh <sukhmeet@energyharvesttrust.com>
Robert Berry <robert.berry@aston.ac.uk>
A special note of thanks to Murugan Vasudevan, leading the CSR Initiative for CISCO Bangalore, India, and Priya Ajmera — Director, Tech Incubator, The/Nudge Foundation for involving me in the Cisco Social Tech Incubation Program. And, gratitude to Nagesh Susarla, Sr, Design Manager at Cisco Bangalore for introducing me to this opportunity.
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