Urban Farmer Dapp

Introducing the Future of Food Security

It is estimated that 811 million people go to bed hungry each night. The UN’s sustainability goal to end world hunger by 2030 is currently projected to fail as over 600 million people will still be food insecure by the deadline. The global pandemic and conflicts have also contributed to the lack of available and affordable food. At the same time climate change continues to impact many areas of the globe in uneven and unpredictable ways. 

No single solution exists to address all of these concerns. It will take a concerted effort across many disciplines and cultures. One way to build resilience against these unpredictable factors is a move towards food sovereignty. This goal can be accomplished through a combination of education, support, and access to shared marketplaces.

The Urban Farmer Dapp by Living Greens Urban Farm provides vertical hydroponic farmers with tools to learn, grow, and build their business. By integrating “Internet of Things” automation and monitoring, machine learning, and blockchain technology, the Urban Farmer Dapp provides extraordinary value to small farmers, while maintaining the data that will continue to improve operations, and offer traceability options to protect the business and its consumers.

Market

Vertical farming market share will grow to over 5 billion dollars this year, and is projected to grow 25.5 percent annually through 2030 where it is expected to be an over 33 billion dollar annual industry.

Competition

And while there are companies who build software for farming, the competitive landscape is primarily focused on traditional farming and packing operations for large farms. So the software tools currently available can be prohibitively expensive for the small farmer. The main competitors in this space charge upwards of $2500.00 monthly. 

Other tools available may be less expensive, but are built specific to a certain technology, locking customers into a single architecture or hardware setup. This combination of high costs and low flexibility points to an opportunity to expand the market for small urban agriculture businesses.

Reference Farm

Built as a farm first, Living Greens is now a reference farm for developing a sustainable model of small farming that will build community resilience, disrupt food insecurity, and lead the way to building sustainable agriculture within cities. We have extensively tested grow methods for several high value crops, and we have spent thousands of hours sharing the produce with end users. We have experience selling direct to consumer and via institutional contracts. The application we are building takes the small farm concept and brings automation, monitoring, and fulfillment to even the smallest farm.

Blockchain

By basing our tools on blockchain technology, we leverage two amazing opportunities for our business through transaction fee revenue generation and traceability of food production. 

Blockchain based tools generally work with transaction fees, or use a native token to transact. We benefit from both. We have released the Resilience token on the Cardano blockchain. As of May first over 47,000 wallets have accessed our token fondly known throughout the community as RESI and are holding some quantity of it for use when the app is live. This represents a ready customer base that will use the native token to access all of the areas of the application. 

Product Development

Users will gain access to the educational content, the management tools, traceability tools, and the marketplace using RESI or Cardano’s currency ADA. Our business collects small transaction fees for each use of the app that generates a block chain record. We also charge for subscription access to the management and traceability tools. The education content also leads to a subscription model, where users can apply automatic configurations to the management tools that match our educational best practices.

Food traceability requires an immutable, trustable source that can be used to understand how food was produced, and where it changed hands until it reaches the consumer. The food traceability system with the app works automatically in the background, tracing the steps taken from planting through packaging, and a non fungible token is created that regulatory bodies or consumers can use to learn where their produce came from, and who handled it.

Our Machine learning systems take feedback from any combination of hand measurements, photos taken on the farm, sensor arrays, and harvest weights to help locate practice improvements to improve harvest yields. The tools can also be leveraged to help diagnose issues with grow cycles, diseases, and systems issues. By combining data from multiple farms, the machine learning algorithm will begin to improve our overall process, and point out ways that we can better educate the farmers using our app to grow their produce.

These development goals can be reached. Our team includes a roster of proven talent in systems design, application development, entrepreneurship, permaculture, and urban agriculture. 

Conclusion

We have come together to be a difference maker against world hunger by building the tools that can be leveraged, regardless of experience level, to begin growing fresh produce in any available space. By building a decentralized marketplace, we also help budding entrepreneurs on their journey to economic stability. By including food traceability standards we offer a layer of protection to the communities that will be served by these small farms. 

We believe that our combined insights and social engagement put us in an excellent position to build and grow the community of small farmers who are the future of urban sustainable agriculture. Food isn’t just a necessity, it is a cultural cornerstone. By empowering small farmers to grow for their community, we build sustainable, resilient communities that will flourish in good times, and support one another in tough times. 

We continue to build the change that we want to see in the world. Join us on the journey.