Minting NFTs from historical agricultural field boundary crop performance

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Nils Helset

[GENERAL] Are you delivering this project as an individual or as an entity (whether formally incorporated or not)

Entity (Incorporated)

[GENERAL] Co-proposers and additional applicants

Not applicable.

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

5

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

No

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem (200-character limit including spaces)

DigiFarm and NMKR will develop the world’s first decentralised blockchain and NFT ecosystem for smallholder farmers and agricultural field boundaries based on performance, to empower global use-cases.

[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.”

DigiFarm has partnered up with NMKR to create the infrastructure for ability for Cardano ecosystem to build services on top of the two data-sets, i.e. NFTs based on tokenised agricultural field boundaries. This would include custom payment links for each NFT and individual field boundary, part which is being developed in Fund 11 (project ID: 1100103 as a proof of concept).

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

Yes

[GENERAL] Please provide here more information on the open source status of your project outputs

In this project DigiFarm and NMKR will provide open source sample data for a section of the field boundaries which have been minted and tokenised (like in the NFT example here: https://pool.pm/asset1zsqw5epzclynwcyev9phfgwc8agn880709ue0n).

[METADATA] Horizons

Supply Chain

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

The solution will include the ability for the entire ecosystem and agricultural value chain to tap into creating value on top of the agricultural field boundaries through minting the NFTs. The solution would include the development of a customised web-application which will include all the fundamental data-layers on field boundaries developed in Fund 11 project (i.e. Project ID: 1100103 and 1100294) and include them in a visual application which includes a map (with satellite imagery data) for the first 1,000 agricultural fields in Kenya and Tanzania which have been minted and the NFT (first example of NFT here: https://pool.pm/asset1zsqw5epzclynwcyev9phfgwc8agn880709ue0n), as well as an additional 20,000 field boundaries across Spain, Kenya, Tanzania, India, Germany and Norway which includes a full overview of the (40+ years of productivity/yield data history for that one particular field, as well as how much % has been planted in hectares in the last 7 years back to 2016) which will then be available in a pop-up on the particular field linked with a customised minting link to each asset, an example screenshot of a CSV file has been attached (here) to highlight how this will work. 

The solution to develop will include a custom web-application with integrated Satellite imagery data (Sentinel-2 at 1 meter per pixel resolution, with 12 spectral bands), including map, search function, field boundaries detected along with productivity history (yield data, historical for a 40 year period), including development of custom url links to enable the scaling of use-cases, specifically targeting:

1. Microfinancing - enabling financial lenders and banks in the local region of the agricultural fields and farms, which would:

1. Reduce underwriting cost and time: the ability to have all the production historical data for one farm or field, would enable underwriters in banks to save cost and time, not needing to collect data directly from farmers (which is often paper-based on unreliable, i.e. no way of validating the data provided by farmers by third party stakeholders) and to automatically gather all the information needed to process an application.
2. Improving lending terms for the farmers: when the bank has access to historical production data, and can confirm and validate by a decentralised and neutral source (i.e. Cardano blockchain) this would mean the banker and underwriter of the loan would be able to reduce their risk and also premiums on farmers who do not have any digital footprint, through accessing the Cardano chain and NFT for that particular field and farm where they can easily validate and check that (a) the agricultural fields have been planted in the last 6 years, meaning the farmer is actively farming the piece of land they’re requesting financing for (b) the agricultural field has produced below or above the average in the region, as we will deliver field benchmarking index, which will enable the banker to validate the performance of the fields historically and then issue financing (for crop input supply, i.e. seeds, fertiliser and crop protection) to the farmer. 

The screenshot below shows an example of the field benchmarking index and how it assesses the productivity (equal to yield) over a ~40 year period, enabling farmer to assess how they can improve their performance but also for the value-chain and suppliers like banks, insurance companies and seed, fertiliser and crop protection vendors to evaluate clients. 

[IMPACT] Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community

Agriculture is the world's largest industry. It employs more than one billion people and generates over $1.3 trillion dollars worth of food annually.

The industry is also one of the most traditional, non-digital industries, which is ripe for a revolutionary and innovative solutions to flip it around, as currently the industry is controlled and profited by the largest enterprises in the world, and every chain along the value chain, farmers are getting more squeezed financially, this is a unique opportunity to create complete transparency in all the chains of the value chain, including pricing and costs, which will benefit the farmer and enable them to take back the power to negotiate better terms and pricing.

The ability to create a simple yet impactful solution to this, would have enormous benefits and impact across the value-chain and industry, and ultimately benefiting the user-group who needs it most, i.e. farmers. 

This solution will create a large scale and potentially global application (as our solution is based on global optical Satellite data, available every 5 days) and use-case for the digital identity of smallholder farmers with global impact, and is essential for the Cardano community, and real-world use case of the technology.

Positive impact includes:

1. It will connect to an external ecosystem of companies such as microfinance, micro insurance, agri supply chains and more
2. It will connect to blockchain/cardano dapps such as Landano (land owership), Zengate.global (agri supply chain) or FIDA (micro insurance for farmers). In this proposal we will collaborate with Zengate.Global  
3. Generating NFTs for agriculture land with dynamic metadeta and connection to other dapps will lead to more on chain transaction.

[CAPABILITY & FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

DigiFarm has successfully demonstrated it's internal capacity to successfully achieve KPIs in the project funded in Fund 8 "Open ledger for agricultural land" (Idea #18354) and was recently selected as one of the projects spotlighted amongst the recently completed 500 Catalyst projects and presented during the Town Hall (12.07.2023). The purpose and objective was to create the POC solution for digitising 914 agricultural field boundaries in Tanzania, where we showed the ability to leverage historical data (based on Satellite imagery) for optimising farmers production, i.e. lowering input costs by up to 5% and increasing yield potential by up to 5%. This has also been completed in parallel with other agricultural partners in Germany, France and Romania. Additionally, DigiFarm has further developed the idea in Fund 8 into two concepts which are currently funded in Fund 11, including: “Creating world's first digital identity for farmers using satellite imagery and AI” and idea #26780 along with “World's first open ledger for in-field agricultural data based on open source SatEO” idea #26818. Additionally, our involvement and commitment to the Cardano ecosystem and track-record highlights our ability to deliver the project with trust and accountability. 

During the project we are also including key Cardano stakeholders and partners for milestones to complete the technical, blockchain components, this includes:

1. Patrick Tobler from NMKR

NMKR is a leading NFT infrastructure provider on the Cardano blockchain, offering a suite of tools that enable brands, companies, and enterprises to create and launch custom NFT projects with ease.

With a focus on accessibility, NMKR provides development APIs and No-Code building blocks that can be combined in a modular way to integrate NFT Minting and NFT Marketplace Trading functionalities on websites quickly and easily.

As the largest NFT infrastructure provider on the Cardano blockchain, NMKR has already minted over 2 Million NFTs and collaborated with high-profile celebrities and entities. By using NMKR , users can create unique NFT projects tailored to their specific needs, tapping into the growing market for digital assets.

At NMKR, we are committed to driving the adoption of digital assets and making NFT creation and trading accessible to everyone. Our platform's modular approach and user-friendly tools allow users to launch their NFT projects quickly and easily, without the need for advanced technical skills. We believe that NFTs represent the future of digital ownership and are excited to be at the forefront of this emerging market.

We will also be engaging and connecting with the broader Cardano community including Santiago Carmuega from Tx.Pipe, Zengate.Global team and Landano. These key resources will also ensure secure, reliable and professional execution of the project and technical development required to scale in the future and next phase. 

[PROJECT MILESTONES] What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

Milestone 1: M1

Milestone Title: Project Collaboration and Management 

A. Milestone Outputs:

• Project initiation and alignment of team members and partners
• Coordinate with Cardano stakeholders including primarily NMKR formally and contractually align on work packages and responsibilities including the possible API and integration needed between map-based web-application, database (AWS) and NFT linking
• Coordinate and integrate the solution we discovered was needed in Fund 11, i.e. Vault3, i.e. for separate files per asset and provide them in a token-gated space at Vault3

B. Acceptance criteria:

• Partnerships agreement signed between DigiFarm and the Cardano stakeholders 
• Successfully assignment of work packages, responsibilities, deliverables, timeline with milestones for each partner during the project period
• Working roadmap of the required integrations between NMKR, Vault3 and DigiFarm 

C. Evidence of milestone completion:

• Confirmation of the collaboration agreement in writing with NMKR
• Documentation and design of required tools and third parties such as Vault3 

Milestone 2: M2

Milestone Title: Creating custom demo, technical framework and database 

A. Milestone Outputs:

Developing custom made web-application demo including map interface integrated with delineated field boundaries, historical production data, satellite imagery data, NFT and custom payment links for the 20,000 field boundaries across various regions, and including 1,000 already minted example field boundaries in Kenya and Tanzania. 

B. Acceptance criteria:

• Successfully prototype demonstration in a Loom video documenting entire feature case
• Successful test report, i.e. Loom video or otherwise (url) to demonstrate the successful implementation of the third-party tools and technologies (Vault3, custom payment links etc) in the web-application MVP

C. Evidence of milestone completion:

• Produced custom payment links accessible in the web-application, i.e. one existing minted (example) and one non-live (minted) NFT, i.e. highlighting both the feature set
• Recorded Loom video of the testing of both features listed in first point, and accessible from web based browser.

Milestone 3: M3

Milestone 3 Title: Fully developed MVP web-application 

A. Milestone Outputs:

Developed and integrated the entire dataset into the MVP and web-application along with the feature set finalised, this includes the entire dataset described, i.e. 20,000 field boundaries ready for minting and 1,000 field boundaries already minted. The feature to be developed in order to improve the usability and experience will include: (a) search functionality, i.e. address bar to search for certain locations or zoom into certain fields which are available in different geographies (b) custom payment links for NFT minting, provided by NMKR integration © satellite imagery map-switching, i.e. including both Mapbox (web tile server) from Maxar as well as SatEO data, from Sentinel-2 (ESA) at 1 meter per pixel resolution for each of the field boundaries and switcher to be able to toggle between the two options (d) Ability for payment link where ecosystem not only can purchase and build services but also to donate, contribute to the end-user (farmer) directly (e) custom branded demo to Cardano and domain created for scale and reach. 

B. Acceptance criteria:

• Successfully demonstration of all feature set mentioned above (i.e. a through e) in a video and also accessible in a publicly available web-application, hosted on AWS with a custom domain to reflect the project 
• Successful creation of database entry of the 20,000 field boundaries and one sample minted (NFT) internally to highlight the classification

C. Evidence of milestone completion:

• CSV exported for the 20,000 field boundaries data (not minted) and 1,000 field boundaries (minted) accessible to reviewer to validate the entries 
• Loom video prototyping the custom made web application and features highlighted and developed 

Final Milestone: MF

Milestone Title: Connecting ecosystems and blockchain

A. Milestone Outputs: The objective of this final milestone is to connect the ecosystem and blockchain to promote and market the solution in order to increase usage and value-add quantified of the final solution launched. 

B. Acceptance criteria:

• Successful validation of the solution working as planned, i.e. features, integration and dataflow is working as expected and outlined in the objectives. 
• Successfully created first partner use-case and value-add, from the developed solution, we are in several discussions with Cardano stakeholders including Landano and Zengate for the ability to integrate and leverage data in order to boost the use-case
• Successfully delivered 1 field boundary (farmer) data to a non-Cardano stakeholder and partner: in order to build value in the solution it is important to bring external stakeholders in on the project, in this instance we have already targeted one bank which we are in contact with which is I&M Bank in Kenya which is one of the largest banks in the region, with presence in Kenya, Mauritius, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, where a large part of their focus is on smallholder agricultural farmers and automating and improving the financial lending underwriting and risk portfolio management division. 

C. Evidence of milestone completion:

• Data flow chart of the different elements of the web application developed (chart) highlighting the successful integration and functionality of the features
• Usage statistics showing data and usage of the custom made website (report generated from Google Analytics) 
• Dissemination and evidence: highlighting the various marketing activities including conferences and events where DigiFarm is promoting the solution (including planned speaker event at the Blockchain4Good Virtual Summit at the end of October (2024) where DigiFarm is presenting Fund 11, 12 and 13 activities and the potential impact. 

[RESOURCES] Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

The project partners including NMKR and DigiFarm are ideal for the project and development of this MVP.

DigiFarm’s team has extensive experience in (a) developing agricultural technology for crop-monitoring using AI and remote sensing (Satellite data) to the agribusinesses market (B2B/B2G) using SaaS-models. Successfully built commercial agricultural technological solutions using remote sensing (Satellite-data) and AI across 100 million hectares: >90% accuracy in crop Detection and >85% accuracy in yield-prediction in soybean and corn (US/Brazil) (b) core team has over 15+ years of on-the-ground crop-producing (farming) experience and close partnership withs Felleskjøpet (largest ag-coop in Norway, NLR (Norwegian Agricultural Advisory Organisation) and University of Life Sciences (NMBU) (c) commercial and corporate Ag-market: over 20+ years combined corporate agriculture leadership experience (d) over 40+ experience in agronomy academic research internationally. Additional qualifications in DigiFarm’s core team and founders (10) include technical and agronomical experience: (a) over 40 years combined international work experience in precision-Ag projects in Canada, USA, Germany, Switzerland, Brazil, Australia, Russia and Ukraine (b) successfully filed 5 patents (AI-based technologies) in agriculture/biology (e) developed technology for Zoner.ag (one of first geospatial web-platforms for analyzing agricultural fields) successfully acquired by Bayer to become the geospatial engine of Xarvio digital-farming platform (owned by BASF). It is also important to mention here that DigiFarm is a fully independent Norwegian organisation, we have not raised any VC capital and are fully bootstrapped since 2019, this approach and independence makes us an ideal fit for this project.

NMKR, The NMKR Studio (previously NFT-MAKER PRO) API is one of the biggest NFT APIs on Cardano. It removes the complexity of building on the Cardano blockchain by creating easy-to-use endpoints that can be utilized by regular developers. NMKR is the world‘s leading brand to enable NFT minting on Cardano for a mainstream audience. The easily accessible interface and simple process provide a comprehensive digital art platform to mint, view, and trade NFTs. NMKR has currently minted more than 2 Million NFTs and has worked with high-profile clients, including celebrities like Martin Lawrence and foundational entities of the Cardano Blockchain: IOHK (IOG), Emurgo, and the Cardano Foundation.

Full list of team members includes:

• Nils Helset, 15th generation farmer in Norway. Extensive experience with precision agriculture services and agronomy - over 8 years experience in crop-producing, managing over 40k decares of pilot farmers with Felleskjøpet. Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nilshelset/
• Konstantin Varik - built advanced AI models in agriculture using remote sensing for over 8 years including AI model for crop-yield prediction for maize and soybeans for USA, Brazil and Argentina with 98-99% yield-prediction accuracy 1-1.5 months prior to harvesting (data provided to the USDA). Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/varik/
• Alex Melnichouck founded B2B ag-tech startups Zoner.ag in 2012 (acquired by BASF in 2015), led and managed the global BASF digital farming team for over 4 years. Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-melnitchouck-8977a522/
• Yosef Akhtman founded and grew Gamaya, Swiss-based ag-tech startup focused on remote sensing and AI funded by Mahindra. Yosef is a scientist and inventor with over 5 registered patents in agriculture and biology. Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akhtman
• Patrick Tobler is the founder and CEO of NMKR, extensive experience in blockchain development and have successfully delivered several projects in the Cardano ecosystem. NMKR is a leading NFT Creation, Minting & Trading Infrastructure provider on the Cardano blockchain, with a proven history of delivering robust and reliable solutions. Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-tobler-6593b912b/

[BUDGET & COSTS] Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

Detailed roadmap above for descriptions of the tasks and work products that will be delivered per detailed milestone:

• Month 1: 140 hours x 175 ADA = 24,500 ADA
• Team/personnel costs: includes GIS-engineers and Data Scientists (Konstantin Varik, Elena Athanasopoulou) along with full-stack engineers Frank Sagini, Morris Warachi and Girish Pallagatti

• Month 2: 140 hours x 175 ADA = 24,500 ADA
• Team/personnel costs: includes GIS-engineers and Data Scientists (Konstantin Varik, Santiago Nullo, Elena Athanasopoulou) along with full-stack engineers Frank Sagini, Morris Warachi and Girish Pallagatti

• Month 3: 140 hours x 175 ADA = 24,500 ADA
• Team/personnel costs: includes NMKR (Patrick Tobler) and DigiFarm's GIS-engineers and Data Scientists (Konstantin Varik, Santiago Nullo, Elena Athanasopoulou) along with full-stack engineers Frank Sagini, Morris Warachi and Girish Pallagatti

• Month 4: 140 hours x 175 ADA = 24,500 ADA
• Team/personnel costs: includes NMKR (Patrick Tobler) and DigiFarm's GIS-engineers and Data Scientists (Konstantin Varik, Santiago Nullo, Elena Athanasopoulou) along with full-stack engineers Frank Sagini, Morris Warachi and Girish Pallagatti

• TOTAL: 98,000 ADA

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

What we're developing in this project is an "enabler" or a baseline of fundamental data that the ecosystem can build further upon as a community, this is an important component of the vision as digital field boundaries, historical productivity data in a fully independent and unique format (block-chain) represents significant value not only for the Cardano ecosystem as a positive influence on sustainability, digitisation and "oracle" in agricultural farming market as well as this project will directly affect the lives of smallholder farmers in both Kenya and Tanzania, opening up a dataset to entire 68 million crop land to create opportunities, this has not been done before due to several bottlenecks such as:

1. Availability of high resolution Satellite data: DigiFarm's deeply resolved Sentinel-2 at 1 meter represents a unique technology ideally suited for the region, seeing as the high resolution is needed to be able to derive analytics for the boundaries which are typically very small, i.e. 0.5 hectares and below, the alternative to using our data would be to have to buy commercial grade SatEO and the closest resolution wise would be having to buy Airbus Pleaidas data at 50cm which costs €8 per sq.km, considering both countries include a total land area of 680,000 sq.km and we'd require 3-dates the total cost would be €16,320,000 just for the input data to deliver and provide these data layers in the region.
2. Additionally, seeing as DigiFarm leverages open source and publicly available data from Sentinel-2 and then run our deep-resolution on it from 10m to 1m this is ideal to be able to keep promoting the open source and independent use of data to support the ecosystem.
3. Lastly, if we could reach 20,000 farmers (fields) which is the goal at the end of this project (and to extend this to 500k the following 18 months) and save 10% on crop input and lower insurance/financing cost by 10%, this is a critical and high potential project.