By connecting farmers to experts and to other peer farmers, the Kaset Go platform aims to catalyze the digital transformation of Thailand’s agricultural sector.
30 November 2020 – dtac and Yara Thailand today officially launched Kaset Go, a mobile application that connects farmers to reliable and real time insights verified by agricultural experts. Designed to empower Thai farmers, the app leverages Yara Thailand’s agricultural knowledge and dtac’s communication technologies.
Kaset Go presently allows farmers to ask questions to agriculture experts and gain knowledge from other farmers within the community with similar experiences. It also provides farmers access to key information such as daily crop prices, agricultural news, tips on eight major staples in Thailand: rice, maize, vegetables, durian, mangosteen, longan, citrus and mango. Content is geo-localized to meet the specific needs of farmers in Thailand’s major regions and there are sections within to support farmers groups with specific interests such as farm certification, logistics and marketing. The content is supported by experts from the Department of Agriculture Extension under the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, the Rak Ban Kerd Foundation, and Yara Thailand.
Sharad Mehrotra, chief executive officer of Total Access Communication Plc or dtac, said, “dtac has a long history of commitment to empowering Thai farmers with mobile connectivity, be it through information platforms or internet of things solutions. Over the past 12+ years, we have collaborated with the industry leading partners like DOAE, RBK to support and learn more about the farmers. Kaset Go represents our most advanced platform build in partnership with Yara. Because farming represents such a large part of Thailand’s workforce and smartphone penetration is among the highest in the region, Kaset Go could be a game changer for Thailand’s digital transformation.”
Since its soft launch in August, Kaset Go has more than 150,000 downloads and attracted more than 100,000 registered users. As the number of downloads and users is rising exponentially, dtac and Yara Thailand is already planning Kaset Go’s next phase of development, which will include information on 44 more crops and key features such as weather warnings, disease alerts, market price benchmarking. There are also plans to extend further to other value-added services such as farm equipment, insurance and finance.
Mehdi Saint-Andre, Managing Director, Yara (Thailand) Co. Ltd. and Vice President Thailand & Myanmar, the world’s leading crop nutrition company, said, “Since our foundation in 1905, we strongly believe that Knowledge is key to support farmers productivity and with our extensive network of local agronomists, Yara has been providing sustainable solutions to Thai farmers for 47 years. Since 2017, Yara has been accelerating its digital farming strategy providing precision farming tools to farmers across the globe and the partnership to develop Kaset Go marks a milestone in Thailand’s agricultural industry as this platform connects farmers to reliable information vetted by experts and validated by the community. Kaset Go is expected to become Thailand’s biggest online platform for farmers and kickstart digital transformation in Thailand’s agricultural industry.”
The Kaset Go app supports farmers through 4 key value propositions:
- Q&A with Endorsement: Providing practical answers and advisory to farmers’ questions, validated by the community and verified by experts.
- Connect & Knowledge Sharing: A forum where farmers can openly connect with local experts and their peers to share practical knowledge based on their own experiences. The app helps promote community building based on focused topics relevant to their crop and location. User generated content sourced from the community gets curated and shared back to the local farmers including fun facts, local wisdom and price information.
- Timely & Relevant Insights: As agricultural data is fragmented, Kaset Go helps farmers manage, sort and analyze all the data real time and gives key information back to the farmer in a timely manner. This helps farmers follow their crop trends and have access to localized actionable insights at their fingertips to support better decision making for their farm.
- Digital Agriculture Services: Value-added features currently being developed to further enhance the offerings of Kaset Go includes: New cutting-edge technologies that can better serve farmers’ needs based on location, such as crop prices, weather forecasts, weather warnings and pests alerts
WHY KASET GO
While the agricultural sector employs about a third of Thailand’s workforce, its share of gross domestic produce (GDP) was only eight percent in 2019. This highlights a low productivity problem due to a lack of technology and knowledge. Moreover, extreme weather events are becoming increasingly common, with this year’s drought expected to trim production by two percent according to Kasikorn Research.
The development of the Kaset Go app started after a joint study with small-scale farmers across Thailand that pointed to three main problems in the agricultural sector: 1) Low productivity from the lack of modern farming knowledge and techniques; 2) Yield gaps and inefficiency in farming due to farmers’ access to information and technologies; and 3) Low profitability as a result of poor access to markets and small-scale farmers’ limited role in the agriculture value chain the lack of transparency in marketing.
Kaset Go aims to be a go-to solution that helps uplift farmers knowledge, solve their challenges and form strong digitally-enabled farming communities.
The Kaset Go is available on iOS and Android from the App store and Google Play. Find out more at https://kasetgo.com/
About Yara
Yara grows knowledge to responsibly feed the world and protect the planet, to fulfill our vision of a collaborative society, a world without hunger and a planet respected. To meet these commitments, we have taken the lead in developing digital farming tools for precision farming and work closely with partners throughout the whole food value chain to develop more climate-friendly crop nutrition solutions. In addition, we are committed to working towards sustainable mineral fertilizer production. We foster an open culture of diversity and inclusion that promotes the safety and integrity of our employees, contractors, business partners, and society at large. Founded in 1905 to solve the emerging famine in Europe, Yara has a worldwide presence with about 17,000 employees and operations in over 60 countries. In 2019, Yara reported revenues of USD 12.9 billion. www.yara.com
About dtac
Total Access Communication PLC or dtac is a leading mobile operator in Thailand, providing 4G, 3G, and 2G services. Through its highly-advanced digitalization initiatives, dtac (Stock Exchange of Thailand symbol: DTAC) is committed to continually improving its mobile services, connecting its customers to what matters most, and empowering society. www.dtac.co.th.
dtac launched the Smart Farmer initiative since 2008 with a strong support and collaboration with Ruam Duay Chuay Kan Sam Nuek Rak Ban Kerd Foundation, setting out to develop agriculture sector to become an important foundation’s to Thailand’s economic and social development. dtac focuses on developing new technology to meet the need of smallholder farmer and solve their problems, all while helping them build necessary skills for entrepreneurship