KUALA LUMPUR: FarmByte Sdn Bhd wants to become an aggregator for smallholders and empower the agricultural sector with high technology, knowledge and application to enhance the national agenda of ensuring food security.
FarmByte is a digital agriculture subsidiary of Kulim (Malaysia) Bhd, which in turn is a subsidiary of Johor Corporation (JCorp).
The former was set up around the idea of a food hub model that is an integral part of the agriculture value chain in empowering smallholders and farmers.
Chief executive officer Syed Aiman Kifli Syed Jaafar said FarmByte is set on producing high value products based on the data and information relating to demand and supply among consumers.
As an aggregator, FarmByte is also seeking to partner with and gather different industry players and stakeholders into the same ecosystem for the growth of the agriculture sector.
"We are looking at how we can actually get everybody on board because this is a very important journey, and at the same time, because we know that we are new, we want to be able to do things very quickly.
"We need to be able to partner with technology partners to create a brand that we can enter into a high value distributorship. Therefore we are looking for partners to share knowledge and technology to bring us to the next level " he said.
Syed Aiman said FarmByte is investing heavily in technology and what sets the company apart from other agricultural companies is the application of technology and internet of things (IoT) within the farming activities.
"We are talking about precision farming which is considered as third generation farming, where the area of focus for now is on the vegetable farm and we have implemented the right technology such as drones and IoT," he said.
On empowering smallholders, Syed Aiman said the FarmByte team has spent some time conducting focus groups and engaging with farmers to understand the pain points and ensure it comes out with value-added solutions.
With all farmers owning a smartphone, Syed Aiman said it is a matter of using the right application to gather information to facilitate smart farming in a way that is helpful to the smallholders.
Syed Aiman said the company is producing an application that helps farmers pave through the three important stages in farming of which he also considered the main categories of farmers' pain points - planning, farming and harvesting.
"What FarmByte hopes to be able to do is to provide personalised advice and price analytics about any plants. This will enable us to forecast the price moving forward as most farmers do not know what to plant during the planning stage.
"As for the farming stage, we have agronomists on demand within the app's reach to gather the insights about what to do if the plant contracted diseases.
"Lastly, when it comes to harvesting, this issue is about manpower and most of their plants are perishable. Therefore we believe that we're able to offtake a lot more at a better price, for the farmers than what they're receiving right now," he said.
FarmByte is looking to share the developed agriculture application with the public in the upcoming months to increase accessibility of technology among agropreneurs.
FarmByte recently teamed up with a Singapore-based agritech company to focus on developing automated vertical indoor farms to produce Asian vegetables in Johor.
Source : https://www.nst.com.my/business/corporate/2023/09/952041/farmbyte-lead-agritech-push-johor
