Seeds and crops · Chennai, India · Alerts & monitoring

No more seed washed away by the monsoon

Kavya is an agronomist at a large seed company near Chennai. Thousands of rice farmers buy her seed.

Listen to the story:

The challenge

When a farmer sows the day before a downpour, the seed washes out, and he blames the seed. Next time he buys from someone else. Kavya’s field officers cannot call every farmer before every storm. Last season, one farm in eight had to sow twice.

How the flow works

With xMap Flows, Kavya built Willow. Willow is an AI employee: a flow of 5 blocks.

  1. When a farmer’s seed order lands in the sheet,

    Each new seed order (New rows)

  2. Willow checks the next seven days at that farm,

    Next seven days at the farm (Weather forecast)

  3. and if heavy rain is coming,

    Heavy rain coming? (Branch)

  4. tells the farmer to hold the seed a few days,

    Wait to sow (WhatsApp Business)

  5. or, if the week looks dry, tells him it is a good week to sow.

    A good week to sow (WhatsApp Business)

What it solves

The result

In October, as the monsoon arrives, Willow tells two thousand farmers around Tiruvallur to wait four days. The rain comes and goes, and they sow on settled ground. Farms sowing twice fall from one in eight to one in fifty.

Kavya’s seed didn’t change. It just started arriving with the forecast.

2,000farmers told to wait
4 daysthe wait that saved it
1 in 50sowed twice, down from 1 in 8

An illustrative scenario: the figures are modelled to show what the flow produces, not a customer's results.

The flow, block by block

  1. 1

    Each new seed order

    New rows

    Starts the flow when new rows appear in a Google Sheet or in a table in My data.

  2. 2

    Next seven days at the farm

    Weather forecast

    The weather forecast (Open-Meteo, from national weather services) for up to 16 days: temperature, rain, wind and UV.

  3. 3

    Heavy rain coming?

    Branch

    Splits items in two.

  4. 4

    Wait to sow

    WhatsApp Business · WhatsApp

    Send text, media and template messages from your WhatsApp Business number.

  5. 5

    A good week to sow

    WhatsApp Business · WhatsApp

    Send text, media and template messages from your WhatsApp Business number.

Templates to build it

Ready-made flows with the same blocks. Open one, change the city and the kind of place, and run it.

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