Agriculture is one of the most fragile sectors. Agri buyers relying upon traditional supply chains struggle every day to cater to their customers. With the Cornonavirus pandemic, the situation only got worse.

In an exclusive interview with Agrigate Global’s Saura Panigrahi, Danilo Miranda, CEO of Bloomspal and one of the finalists of The Sustainable Agtech Challenge brought to you by The Yield Lab Institute and UNEP talks about how his startup is building a robust global supply chain management system for agri-produces to mitigate the risk of fragile agriculture trade.

Edited excerpts:

Congratulations on making it to the Final-8 of The Sustainable Agtech Challenge by the Yield Lab Institute. How has the experience gone?

Thank you! It has been amazing and very fulfilled for us as a team. We have been pitching and showing our e-procurement software to agricultural leaders, investors, mentors, advisors, and researchers of the Universidad Austral. Being part of a program that is intended to work alongside with AgTech startups who are making outstanding contributions to the sustainability of the agricultural industry in LATAM has been an honor for us. We have had support from the Yield Lab Institute not only in guidance but also with a lot of exposure in the market, something very valuable for us.

How would you like to introduce your startup/innovation? Tell us more about the core area of operations and your team.

Agriculture is one of the most fragile industries. A rainy season in South America or a flood in south-east Asia can affect millions of people with shortages all around the world. Consumers don’t realize that the food that they eat, or the flowers that they buy, mostly don’t come from a local farm; it comes from producers all around the world that rely upon the global supply chains to fulfill their customers. Agro- Buyers, on the other hand, struggle every single day to effectively source reliable vendors all over the world and to be able to manage them to get what they need to operate their business. That’s something that we as founders of Bloomspal experienced more than once and after COVID-19 it only got worse. We as a team have more than 25 years in the global trade of flowers and being able to find and deal with new suppliers in regions/countries where the trade was not affected became the priority. The fragility of the agricultural trade hit us very hard.

After this experience, we started to optimize our sourcing and procurement strategy to enhance and ultra-speed our procurement processes. And once we understood how we can solve pain points through software engineering, we developed BloomsPal Network, solving the real problems that procurement leaders have every day within this industry. Our approach to our software was to build a cloud software strategically crafted to centralize the entire procurement operation for one of the most fast-paced and high-risk supply chains.

The Agriculture Sector is very dynamic in nature. What are the major challenges you are facing?

The unexpected nature of COVID-19 has unveiled that many companies are not well prepared for disruptions in their supply chain and are re-evaluating how to procure agro-commodities going forward. Today companies look for alternative ports, source alternative suppliers, develop dual sourcing strategies, and do critical reviews of trade routes. While in the past, many companies focused on optimizing the relationship with their existing suppliers to avoid shortages, we are seeing procurement leaders shift that focus to more resilient and faster adjustments in their supply chains for efficiency. And BloomsPal solves exactly that.

In recent times, agri-tech has become one of the favorites for investors. What would be your pitch to a prospective investor?

BloomsPal is a smart platform for buyers of agro-commodities to discover, manage & engage with their suppliers. We provide supplier engagement, procurement, logistics, and reporting tools strategically crafted to centralize and accelerate agro-procurement processes. BloomsPal focuses on the process that is held before the final purchase order is done, enabling procurement teams to reduce dramatically the usage of dispersed tools like spreadsheets, emails, Whatsapp, and phone calls (among others). On the other hand, farmers get access to a full suite of tools to confirm/modify/reject orders, manage business agreements, and make offers of their stock to the network of verified buyers.

We started operations in the 100B global wholesale flower trade and although we are a young company because we started in 2020; in 2021 we have connected our customers with more than 50 farms, mostly in Colombia (second-largest exporter). All these transactions have generated more than 3 million USD in revenue for the farms.

Agritech is booming with innovative ideas. What would be your advice to young entrepreneurs who would like to venture into this segment?

Today we are facing a gap between agriculture and technology. Today, the industry needs more innovation in every stage, from farm to consumer, the industry is full of opportunities!

Finally, tell us more about your plans

Well, our short-term plan is to consolidate within the global flower trade. We still have a lot to work on this sector, where Colombia is the number 1 producer and the second-largest exporter (80% of the flowers sold within the USA, come straight from farms in COL). In the near future, we are planning to expand our business to the global trade of fruits and vegetables.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the views of Agrigate Global.

“The pandemic has fundamentally impacted gender equality in both the workplace and the home, rolling back years of progress,” said WEF’s managing director Saadia Zahidi.

The annual report estimated, on the basis of current trajectory, that the gender gap will not be closed for another 135.6 years.

Overall, Iceland has been ranked the most gender-equal country, while the largest gender gap was in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Over 330 million youngsters have been stuck at home for about nine months, since the COVID-19 spread unprecedentedly this time last year, leaving them feeling isolated and anxious about their future.

“Tens and tens of millions of youngsters have been left feeling isolated and afraid and lonely and anxious because of these enforced lockdowns and isolations that have become as a result of this pandemic,” said UNICEF spokesperson James Elder.

He said countries needed to emerge from this pandemic “with a better approach, a better approach to child and adolescent mental health, and that probably starts just by giving the issue the attention it deserves.”

The UN agency also stated that the COVID-19 pandemic has halted critical mental health services in 93% of countries globally.

Chinese meat importers suggested exporters in countries with COVID-19 outbreaks to disinfect the outer packaging of products as well as the inner side of containers before sealing export products, the country’s top industry group stated.

“China has been importing a large quantity of meats this year, and has detected virus on the packaging of cold chain products many times, even as lots of disinfection has been done domestically. It should be better to handle this (virus control) at the meats exporting origins, and carry out disinfection at the production plants,” said Gao Guan, spokesman for the China Meat Association.

China has increased disinfection and virus testing on frozen food after it found coronavirus on imported products and packaging, Reuters reported.

The initiative was proposed to “ensure the safety of imported cold-chain food and boost consumers’ confidence in imported cold-chain products,” the statement said.

Reported cases have shown that contact with packaging contaminated with the deadly contagion might lead to human infection, said the Chinese association.

However, the World Health Organization stated the risk of catching COVID-19 from frozen food is low.

Lebanon signed a cooperation agreement with the the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) in order to develop its farming sector, the National News Agency reported.

The country’s Agriculture Minister Abbas Mortada said that only the agriculture sector can guarantee food security for the people living in Lebanon while securing access to nutritious at reasonable prices amidst the ongoing economic crisis.

“The agreement with WFP is not restricted to offering financial and food support but it also includes developing the infrastructure of the sector,” he said.

Meanwhile, WFP’s representative Abdallah Al-Wardat stated that the program offers financial and food support to more than 1 million Syrian refugees and the most vulnerable people in Lebanon.

With about one million people in Lebanon currently living below the poverty line, the world’s largest humanitarian organization is also helping families affected by the COVID-19 lockdown measures.

IT giant Cisco has announced an “agri challenge” with a prize purse of Rs 2 crore in order to mobilise agtech startups to innovate solutions that have the potential to favorably impact at least 10 million small and marginal farmers.

The challenge is being co-hosted by K VijayRaghavan, PSA to the Government of India, while conceptualised and managed by NGO — The/Nudge Centre for Social Innovation.

It will will run in stages over 12 months, supporting participants in developing solutions that help alleviate the issues of low-income and falling profitability.

“Such a multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder collaboration will play a catalytic role in implementing scientific and technological interventions in agriculture, thereby improving farmers’ productivity and doubling farmers’ income,” said K VijayRaghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser to Government of India.

It must be mentioned here that the Cisco Agri Challenge draws talent, technology as well as capital to the most pressing issues of small farmers, spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Farmers are a critical part of India’s socio-economic fabric, but they continue to face the challenge of low profitability, exacerbated by the pandemic. Through the Cisco Agri Challenge platform, we aim to accelerate digital transformation in the agriculture sector,” said Harish Krishnan, MD, Public Affairs and Strategic Engagements, Cisco India and SAARC.

The UAE-based Lulu Group International announced to set up a food processing centre in Srinagar for sourcing a variety of agri-products from Jammu and Kashmir.

The announcement was made by Lulu group chairman during a meeting with a delegation from J&K led by its Principal Secretary (Agri Production & Horticulture) Navin Kumar Choudhary on the sidelines of the UAE-India Food Security Summit 2020.

Presently, Lulu imports apples and saffron from Kashmir and imports will significantly increase in the near future.

The group imported over 400 tons of Kashmiri apples so far, despite several challenges in the recent past due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The worldwide response to the COVID-19 outbreak has led the biggest annual fall in CO2 emissions since World War Two, says a new study, indicating that emissions have decreased by around 7% this year.

France and the United Kingdom observed the greatest falls, predominantly due to severe lockdowns in response to a second wave of infections.

“The main reason is that these two countries had two waves of confinement that were really quite severe compared with other countries. The UK and France have a lot of their emissions come from the transport sector and generally have a bit less coming from industry and other sectors,” said Prof Corinne Le Quéré, from the University of East Anglia, UK.

On the other hand, China has witnessed such a large rebound from COVID-19 that overall emissions may grow this year, BBC reported.

The drop in carbon in 2020 has dwarfed all the previous big falls, as per the news report, adding this year saw carbon emissions decline by over 2 billion tonnes.

The United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) new study has noted that an additional 207 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty by the year 2030 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, bringing the total number of extremely poor to more than a billion globally.

The study examines the consequences of different COVID-19 recovery scenarios on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), assessing the multidimensional effects of the ongoing crisis over the next decade.

The concerted SDG interventions suggested include behavioural changes through nudges, such as improved efficiency in governance and changes in consumption patterns of food, energy as well as water.

“As this new poverty research highlights, the COVID-19 pandemic is a tipping point, and the choices leaders take now could take the world in very different directions,” said UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner.

The SDG Investor Map for India has been launched by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Invest India, laying out 18 investment opportunities areas.

These investment opportunities areas are in six critical sustainable development goals, including farming, education, healthcare, financial services and renewable energy.

“India occupies a key role in determining the success of the SDGs, globally. This initiative is an instrumental stride in India’s development trajectory, and I believe it couldn’t have come at a better time,” Invest India MD & CEO Deepak Bagla said, adding the data-backed research serves as useful blueprints to understand how best the SDG financing gap can be narrowed.

The development pathway that India selects will set an example for other developing nations, the UNDP stated, adding the SDG financing gap has widened by an estimated USD 400 billion in developing countries due to the COVID-19 outbreak.