Gero – integrated farm management software powered by Cardano. Upgrading to web3 and creating a new use case on the Cardano Blockchain

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Hugo Vieira

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

hugoangv@gmail.com

Additional applicants

No additional applicants

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

12

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language.

No

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

Yes

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.” .

Main dependency: existing app.

• Gero => it's an existing farm management solution built for the Portuguese market and that has been in use for over 7 years. I am the app's owner and have full permission to use it and change it.

Possible dependencies/ partnerships:

• Digifarms => Digifarms was a successful use case funded back in 2022 with F9: Dapps, Products & Integrations for ₳ 92000. The new version of Gero intends to use Digifarm's API for field boundary detection and integration with our solution.
• Onesoil =>Onesoil api solution is also a possible alternative to DIgifarms with mora data available on the app. The choice between these 2 suppliers will depend on final MVP outline.
• IOG Marlowe =>We are considering the use of Marlowe open source tools to create, verify, and deploy secure smart contracts on Cardano.
• NMKR => We are considering the use of NMKR to mint NFT's in the form of a traceability item for products that were produced and registered in the application. This would ensure greater transparency along the supply chain.
• Atala PRISM => We are considering the use of Atala PRISM for credential management and farmer certification assurance. Farmers that sell to international (and national) markets are subject to several certification schemes and communications and assurance of all these different certification schemes is not always easy for everyone (not farmer nor buyer). Similar to the case study of the Ethiopia’s Ministry of Education that implemented a national student and teacher ID and attainment recording system based on blockchain using Atala PRISM, we are considering making the same for farmers and certification schemes to allow for easier communication, traceability and buyer and consumer assurance.

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

No

[GENERAL] If NO, please describe which outputs are not going to be open source. If YES, please write “Project will be fully open source.”

Most of our product is a comercial product and won't be supplied as an outsource product. However, we intend to create an industry standard for traceability of farming logs that will obey the criteria for all farm certification schemes and address the buyer's needs.

This will be an open source output of our project and we will promote it next to major stakeholders (certifications schemes, major buyer and supply chains, governments, etc.)

[METADATA] Category of Proposal

RealFi

[METADATA] SDG rating

SDG goals:

• End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
• Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
• Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
• Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

SDG subgoals:

• By 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment
• By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality
• Increase investment, including through enhanced international cooperation, in rural infrastructure, agricultural research and extension services, technology development and plant and livestock gene banks in order to enhance agricultural productive capacity in developing countries, in particular least developed countries
• By 2030, substantially increase water-use efficiency across all sectors and ensure sustainable withdrawals and supply of freshwater to address water scarcity and substantially reduce the number of people suffering from water scarcity
• Facilitate sustainable and resilient infrastructure development in developing countries through enhanced financial, technological and technical support to African countries, least developed countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing States
• Significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries by 2020

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

• Average income of small-scale food producers, by sex and indigenous status
• Proportion of agricultural area under productive and sustainable agriculture

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

THE CONTEXT

Gero is an existing web2 app for farm management with a 7 year implementation on the Portuguese Market. The existing app is already a proven example of helping farmers achieve certification of their farms, ensure traceability and give a track record of farm operations that is helpful in managing day to day field work, with a reduced cost so that both big and small farmers can use the same helpful tools.

Given its proven record, we believe it's time to move into the future by both achieving a broader range of customers, as well as bringing the solution to web3 and the Cardano Blockchain is our perfect ally to do it.

THE PLAN

By applying to this grant, we intend to develop the following:

• An industry standard traceability and operations record that is verifiable in farmers certifications schemes and approved by buyers;
• An MVP app based on the current web2 app that will be fully integrated in the Cardano Blockchain, making use of not only present use cases that are relevant to the industry, as well as payment methods, traceability solutions and verifiable and secure record system;

Our product for this grant will have the following features to help farmers:

• Detailed field design and NVDI maps to help in decision making;
• Weather forecast for each field;
• Field historic records to ensure that proper crop rotations are being used;
• Task management and planing with pre-defined tasks;
• Fertilizer and plant protection product database to facilitate records and help farmers in decision making when chemical or biological use of products is needed;
• Soils, water and leaf analysis registry that will result in a fertilization plan to advise farmers on the correct amounts and types of fertilizer to use for each soil type and crop;
• Easy to use calculators for fertilizer and plant protection products;
• Easy to use pre-determind register forms that have been validated in the previous version on it's time saving and efficiency for farm use;
• Equipment and operator registry that will allow to setup maintenance and inspection alerts that are essencial for certain certification schemes;
• Water management and use registry that accounts for total nitrate content that is applied on the crop in its life cycle;
• Agronomic technicians login that allows them to register recommendations to farmers on fertilizer and plant protection product use and task management (mandatory for certification schemes);
• Harvest module that will allow to not only register total crop yield, but also to compare them to previous years, previous fertilizer applications, and automatically suggest where the farmer could improve;
• Final traceability record written with the industry standard traceability and operations record that we will develop. This will allow for an eventual registry in the form of an NFT that could assure traceability along all the supply chain, from farm to fork and give the consumer a greater insight on the product he is buying.

THE X-FACTOR

The differentiating factor about this project when relating to projects already developed on the Cardano blockchain before (like digifarms, terrafirma - Cavateco, urban farmer dApp, etc), is that this is a true end-to-end solution for farmers of all dimensions that is cost effective, cheap, has a proven record of real usage that will help to build an even better and more helpful solution, gives helpful tools for farmers and assures buyers, certification organisms and consumers of product traceability.

This tool also helps farmers to produce in a more sustainable way by giving advice on fertilizer usage and plant protection products.

These reasons will most definitely bring greater adoption to the Cardano Blockchain by farmers around the world.

[IMPACT] How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

We will work with existing partners and solutions within (but not only), the Cardano ecosystem, as described above in the "Dependencies".

Also, as stated above, the differentiating factor about this project when relating to projects already developed on the Cardano blockchain before (like digifarms, terrafirma - Cavateco, urban farmer dApp, etc), is that this is a true end-to-end solution for farmers of all dimensions that is cost effective, cheap, has a proven record of real usage that will help to build an even better and more helpful solution, gives helpful tools for farmers and assures buyers, certification organisms and consumers of product traceability.

This tool also helps farmers to produce in a more sustainable way by giving advice on fertilizer usage and plant protection products.

These reasons alone will most definitely bring greater adoption to the Cardano Blockchain by farmers around the world.

Being a cost effective solution, we predict to be present in at least 40 countries within the first 2-3 years.

[IMPACT] How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

Being a comercial company, the app's success rate will be measured by user adoption and license renovation with the following KPI's:

• 1st year => present in at least 5 countries, min 100 active users;
• 2nd year
• => present in at least 20 countries
• => user subscription renovation above 90%

Regarding the open-source industry standard traceability and operations record that we will develop, our targets as success rate are the following:

• Usage by at least 1 web2 competitor on the second year;
• Recommendation by 1 voluntary certification scheme or governamental entity;
• Recommendation by GFSI for general use in farm certification options (probably the most difficult to achieve, but the sky's the limit ;)

[IMPACT] Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

The open-source industry standard traceability and operations record will be shared on github and on our app's website.

Regarding the other KPI's, we will keep a dedicated page on our website dedicated to the Catalyst Fund and our targets, objectives and outputs.

This grant will allow not only to migrate our current solution to web3 and improve it, but also to gain other objectives and partners that will be helpful in further development. These are further developments that are predicted to start after the end of this grant:

• Hardware integration with tractor data (spraying, fertilizer application, harvesting amount, etc), and weather stations;
• Costs module to help farmer reach a final cost for each kg or pound of product;
• A specific solution for hydroponic farming;
• Models for disease prediction to help farmers act when an economic level of attack is reached, thus preventing excessive use of pesticides but also maintaining economic sustainability.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

Our ability to carry out this project is justified on the fact that we are a cohesive team with members that understand this market and have had a working solution for 7 years in web2.

Also, all our team members have made their professional lives working in top companies and are recognised as experts in their field of action.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

Our main goal is to migrate the current solution to web3 and the Cardano Blockchain, improving what we have by counting on our years of experience and user feedback.

So the specific goals are:

• Deploy a working MVP that is an improvement of the current application;
• Have a user subscription renewal rate above 90%;
• Have the approval of a major stakeholder for our open-source industry standard traceability and operations record

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

Full extensive description of the milestones and outputs is shown on the link on the bottom of this section.

But here's a brief description of the milestones and activities for this project. The milestones are named after common agricultural themes:

1. Field => to be delivered in the first 1/4 of the implementation year
2. Diagnosis => List current and future potential improvements, list potential data suppliers, list potential tech partners, list of potential hardware partners;
3. Project final breakdown => Full project description for MVP powered by Cardano
4. Crop => to be delivered in the second 1/4 of the implementation year
5. Open-source field notebook => Preparation for the creation of an industry standard regarding farming operations registry and traceability according to GFSI, GLOBALG.A.P. and other farm certification schemes and standards;
6. Database for nutrient application advisory => Creation of the database that will help farmers by advising what are the correct amounts of fertilizer to use depending on crop and soil conditions;
7. Database for plant protection products => Creation of the database that will have all the necessary information about plant protection products to advise about its usage;
8. Tractor => to be delivered in the third 1/4 of the implementation year
9. Dependency stage => Connection of all dependencies and data suppliers and test run to data collection performance
10. Smart contract => Implementation of data gathering and smart contract execution
11. Water => to be delivered in the forth 1/4 of the implementation year
12. MVP implementation => Working MVP version. Tests will be made with existing platform customers to ensure stability.
13. Invoicing => Implementing an existing solution for invoicing new and existing customers.
14. Harvest => to be delivered in the forth 1/4 of the implementation year
15. Payment module => Successful external users registration and payment using credit card or bank transfer;
16. Wallet integration => Successful external users registration and payment using a connected wallet
17. Traceability Standard Presentation => Presentation to industry's leading stakeholders of a general use Standard for traceability and field operations register
18. Sales & Marketing
19. Stages after this fund:
20. Weather station => second year
21. Hardware integration => Receive local data from tractors and weather stations
22. Hydroponic solution => MVP for use in hydroponic farms

Please find the detailed steps, milestones and costs in the following link.

Full project Steps, Milestones, Outputs and Costs

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

Full extensive description of the milestones and outputs is shown on the link on the bottom of this section.

But here's a brief description of the milestones and activities for this project. The milestones are named after common agricultural themes:

1. Field => to be delivered in the first 1/4 of the implementation year
2. Diagnosis => List current and future potential improvements, list potential data suppliers, list potential tech partners, list of potential hardware partners;
3. Project final breakdown => Full project description for MVP powered by Cardano
4. Crop => to be delivered in the second 1/4 of the implementation year
5. Open-source field notebook => Preparation for the creation of an industry standard regarding farming operations registry and traceability according to GFSI, GLOBALG.A.P. and other farm certification schemes and standards;
6. Database for nutrient application advisory => Creation of the database that will help farmers by advising what are the correct amounts of fertilizer to use depending on crop and soil conditions;
7. Database for plant protection products => Creation of the database that will have all the necessary information about plant protection products to advise about its usage;
8. Tractor => to be delivered in the third 1/4 of the implementation year
9. Dependency stage => Connection of all dependencies and data suppliers and test run to data collection performance
10. Smart contract => Implementation of data gathering and smart contract execution
11. Water => to be delivered in the forth 1/4 of the implementation year
12. MVP implementation => Working MVP version. Tests will be made with existing platform customers to ensure stability.
13. Invoicing => Implementing an existing solution for invoicing new and existing customers.
14. Harvest => to be delivered in the forth 1/4 of the implementation year
15. Payment module => Successful external users registration and payment using credit card or bank transfer;
16. Wallet integration => Successful external users registration and payment using a connected wallet
17. Traceability Standard Presentation => Presentation to industry's leading stakeholders of a general use Standard for traceability and field operations register
18. Sales & Marketing
19. Stages after this fund:
20. Weather station => second year
21. Hardware integration => Receive local data from tractors and weather stations
22. Hydroponic solution => MVP for use in hydroponic farms

Please find the detailed steps, milestones and costs in the following link.

Full project Steps, Milestones, Outputs and Costs

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

Please find the detailed steps, milestones and costs in the following link.

Full project Steps, Milestones, Outputs and Costs

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

The costs breakdown was calculated with a thorough research about the time involved for each stage and the general rates for these services in the industry.

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agreed to Fund10 rules and also that data in the Submission Form and other data provided by the project team during the course of the project will be publicly available.

I Accept