CBL’s farmer network goes digital with Smart Agro app

Tuesday, 22 February 2022 00:08 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The Smart Agro app connects farmers directly with agriculture field teams. Here CBL’s field officers demonstrate the ease of this app to farmers

As one of Sri Lanka’s largest food manufacturing conglomerates, the CBL Group annually sources over 15,000-17,000 MT in agriculture raw materials like corn, soya, green gram, groundnuts, rice and spices each year from its network of 13,000+ registered farmers. These raw materials are used in CBL’s brands like Samaposha, Nutriline, Sera, Lankasoy, Ritzbury and Munchee and strengthening this supply chain against future risk is crucial to CBL’s sustainability agenda.

CBL’s Smart Agro digital app was launched this week, marking a milestone in CBL’s strategy to strengthen its vertically integrated agriculture supply chain against future risk through digitisation and technology. The app, which can be downloaded free of charge; digitises new farmer registration and allows verified farmers registered with CBL’s network to access a range of services including loans, contract term management and real time support from CBL’s agriculture field teams.

CBL’s agriculture sourcing operations have been expanded over the past few years to cater to growing demand and, ensuring transparency and seamless communication to support this expansion is a key priority.

“The Smart Agro platform will address key risks in our agricultural sourcing chain by enabling the sharing of critical information for management decisions to increase productivity and profitability for farming communities,” CBL subsidiary Plenty Foods Ltd. Director Agribusiness Development Dr. Rukshan Gunatilaka said.

The Smart Agro app, was developed through an in-house collaboration between CBL’s Agriculture and IT teams and was partially funded by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), to support CBL’s aim of securing agriculture raw material supply for production through sustainable means. Making farming a profitable and productive venture for farmers through guaranteed pricing and fair terms is a key part of CBL’s strategy. CBL Smart Agro connects farmers to dedicated agriculture field teams and real time support by automating a large component of manual operations.

The CBL Smart Agro app can be downloaded by farmers on the Google Play store.