Farmer carbon credit validation

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

Android app+dapp to validate farmer activity, incentivize farmer to implement biochar practice, remove carbon and earn an income

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

20+ years experience working with farmers in developing countries, supported by 10+ years of digital product development experience and 20+ years of entrepreneurial expertise. Supported by local teams in Ghana. Started the project in Ghana 9 months ago. 

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

The massive problem

The voluntary carbon industry take 80-70% of carbon credit revenue from the project owners who are doing the work on the ground! 

“It shows that for every £10 a buyer spends

with a carbon offsetting retailer using CERs, £2.76 typically goes to setting up and running the

project. For a statutory buyer dealing direct with brokers, £3.06 from every £10 typically goes to

the environmental project.” 

Research: http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/Offsetting_with_CDM_credits.pdf

The process of setting up a project to be certified is today extremely expensive and not possible for small carbon removal projects. The minimum is estimated to be between $10.000-$50.000 just to be certified and continuously validated.

[Read more: Fees Gold Standard: https://globalgoals.goldstandard.org/fees/ and Verra https://verra.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Program-Fee-Schedule_v4.1.pdf]

The large carbon projects a rapidly growing and the global voluntary carbon market is estimated to be more then $100bn by 2030

Read more: https://trove-research.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Trove-Research_Scale-of-VCM_29-Oct-2020-2.pdf

Read more: https://www.ft.com/content/8ed608b2-25c8-48d2-9653-c447adbd538f

The teams long term vision is:

Challenges

Today the three largest challenges towards the vision and stopping climate change are: 

1. Knowledge on what to do to stop climate change. A lot of government and private research is done on how to stop climate change, but very little are converted into actionable items we can all execute on based on our situation and competencies. 
2. No financial feasibility because of certification industry. Today, to remove carbon from the atmosphere, you need to be certified by an industry player which cost approximately 70% of all potential profit from carbon credit sales.
3. No decentralized solution to support the change. There are no scalable solution today to support the millions of people and organizations wanting participate in removing the desperately needed carbon and no scalable solution for how they can prove and validate the impact they want to do. 

The proposed solution

This proposals solution address the above challenges by distributing knowledge on carbon removal and certify the farmers work in a cheap and scalable way.

The initial solution is free to use mobile app for an NGO’s team members to engage with local farmers on how to incorporate carbon removing farming practices to increase the farming yield, remove more carbon and to generate a new income.

The first use case will be working with the NGO called The Pond Foundation and 20-30 ghanaian farmers on how to make biochar (carbon sink from plants) and use it as soil fertilization while removing carbon. The app will be focused on registering the land of the farmers, documenting the status of the land, documenting the project type (in this case it will be either transforming into using biochar as fertilizer for the land or selecting land for forest conservation) and monthly updating progress. Since very few of the farmers have smartphones the app will be build to specifically support the NGO team member in selecting only the relevant data as smooth as possible based on knowledge from scientific research on what is important for having a real impact on climate change.

All data relevant to compliance will be stored on the Cardano blockchain for everyone to review.

Testing oven for producing biochar from rice husk in Tamale, Ghana.

Link to how biochar removes carbon: https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo395

More info on the general project here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pFIlHzkOQOsRZGTTo4MQIk1sM6bAGtTMolr25Y1PC5c/edit#

Value for customers and users

The app will enable the farmer to be transparent and compliant within carbon removal and earn an additional income. The app will enable the NGO team to support a huge amount of farmers to be compliant and therefore an even greater climate impact.

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

The challenge ask the question: What dapps, products and integrations can be implemented to bring impactful use cases to Cardano ecosystem that help drive more adoption? Than it goes describing various sectors including: marketplaces, nation governance systems and environment. This proposal address all of the above.

In addition it build a dapp for a massive problem in Africa in general as well as in the country we are working in. Ghana has a population of 25.37 million [...] with 68 % and 32 % living in the rural and urban areas respectively. About 52 % of the labor force is engaged in agriculture….. Approximately, 39 % of farm labor force is women. Agriculture contributes to 54 % of Ghana’s GDP, and accounts for over 40 % of export earnings, while at the same time providing over 90 % of the food needs of the country. Ghana’s agriculture is predominantly smallholder, traditional and rain-fed (SRID, 2001). Source: https://www.fao.org/ghana/fao-in-ghana/ghana-at-a-glance/en/

This solution will directly impact small farmer livelihood and the environment by amount of CO2 sequestered because of the increased adoption biochar as fertilization of the farmers soil, the of using artificial fertilizer will be stopped and the new sustainable way of fertilizing the soil will be the beginning of a local revolution using biochar. This solution will increase number of CO2 sequestered, increase awareness and increase the number of people changing an environmentally damaging habit.

All if the above is done considering a business model to enable scale. In fact both verification services in supply chains as well as carbon markets already includes supply finance opportunity - however most of the finance does not reach the “boots on the ground” and this is what this proposals is aiming to change.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

Challenge 1: Scalability in data gathering with farmers and making the app easy to use and fast enough for one person to support hundreds of farmers long term. Our strategy to mitigate this challenge is to build the app in close collaboration with farmers, NGOs and carbon removal experts to make sure we are razor focused on functionality that have impact.

Challenge 2: Making the unit economics sustainable enough to support all stakeholders will be a challenge. The current strategy is for customers buying the carbon credit to pay a premium on top, given the level of transparency and this way support the participating community.

To mitigate both issues we are also collaborating with a company (off taker) www.whatiffood.com who will both mitigate its carbon through the process as well work with us on innovative business models to consider scalability. 

Challenge 3: Localization, understating local systems and culture are a challenge. To mitigate it the project is collaborating directly with local team on the ground as well having the support of WADA.org which has a strong presence in Ghana.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

The solution described in this proposal build upon of the work currently being done in the fund 8 funded proposal “21st century Agri supply chain”: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/403695 

The product will be an android app connected to a dapp supporting the NGO https://thepondfoundation.org team members with the following functionality:

1. NGO user login
2. Registrering the farmer with baseline data.
3. Creating a digital identity for the farmer
4. Creating a wallet for the farmer
5. Registering the farmers land.
6. Selecting carbon removal impact type: Biochar or forest conservation.
7. Support framer in collecting relevant data for the impact type.
8. Support knowledge sharing with farmer for the chosen impact type.
9. Defining progress tracking data points together with farmer.
10. Submit farmer registration for community validation.
11. Registering data on Cardano for transparency.
12. Tracking farmer progress and submit for community validation.
13. Showing carbon credits generated from the farmers impact.

For this proposal the carbon credits generation and sale will be controlled by the Pond foundation for compliance reasons.

The singaporean company WhatIF Foods is right now funding the work the Pond Foundation is doing in Ghana within their Bamboa groundnut supply chain. WhatIF Foods have committed to buy $xxxx worth of carbon removal credits from their supply chain in Ghana. For this proposals scope all carbon removal credits will be sold to WhatIF Foods.

The project is planned for 5 months with the following main activities:

Month 1

Project initiation and project plan

Core team setup and partnerships

Use case definition

Concepts and ux initial sprint

Start compliance definition for biochar

Month 2

UX & UI design mockups

User tests

Technical solution design

Android app ux flows

Start Android app + Dapp development

Month 3

Ecosystem stakeholder tests

Android app ui design

Android app development

Dapp development design

Month 4

Live usage tests with The Pond Foundation, validators and farmers in Ghana

Core product usage metrics

Android app development

Dapp development

V2 product description

Month 5

Android app development

Dapp development

Planned product roadmap

Product strategy for future development

Business and funding plan

Community investment pitch

Main deliverables:

Android app for NGOs to support farmers:

• Get a digital identity
• Get a wallet on Cardano
• Knowledge on farming practices for carbon removing 
• Signup for biochar carbon removal project
• Be compliant for carbon credits
• Earn carbon credits
• Sell carbon credits

Dapp

• Document data to ledger
• Digital identity
• Wallet
• Authentication

User feedback report from farmers and The Pond foundation

Video demo of the solution

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

The project is a collaboration between various organizations. Here are the details: 

What if foods (whatif-foods.com)

WhatIF foods is a planet-based food company founded on regenerative principles. ReGeneration is in our DNA. We make foods that replenish diets, restore degraded lands by using crops that are grown with regenerative practices, and reconnect with farming communities.

whatif-foods.com became a member of The Pond Foundation. WhatIF Foods is seeking the Foundation’s support to develop and implement a new raw material supply chain within Ghana that supports its mission to source their raw materials from regenerative farming that materially improves the lives of farmers. Regenerative agriculture methods and mindset contributed to soil health, and biodiversity, reducing erosion and capturing carbon from the atmosphere. It also includes reducing chemical fertilizer and considering farmers' and consumers' health. It is all part of the 21st-century supply chain.    

Read more about WHatIF foods mission here: https://whatif-foods.com/pages/about

Project lead for WhatIF Food: Sylvie Chau 

Innovation and Process Technology 

Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sylvie-chau-893422139/

The Pond Foundation

The Pond Foundation is a non-profit organization funded by Scott Poynton and dedicated to driving change for good. It exist to guide people and organizations on the journey to reconnect with themselves and drive extensive earth-serving action. For more information :

The Pond Foundation : https://thepondfoundation.org/

My Carbon zero program : https://mcz.thepondfoundation.org/

The pond foundation is the one commissioned by WhatIfFood for the project in Ghana and operating there for the last 9 months. 

The foundation is also part of an important related fund 7 funded proposal, the Cardano Carbon Footprint: cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/385045 through which the team is well engaged with the SPO community https://www.climateneutralcardano.org/ as well as www.Cardano4climate.com community.

Scott Poynton, Sustainability Lead

Scott is a real social and environmental leader for the last 30 years. He created an NGO named The Forest Trust (currently www.earthworm.org) and his estimated positive impact is for about $ 2 trillion of supply chains and millions of hectares of forest. He is now on his biggest mission to mitigate climate change. 

Involvement: Leading the project within Ghana and enabling access to stakeholders of the supply chain.

Links: https://www.scottpoynton.com/about-1 

For more information please visit:

https://adifferentway.life/

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Magnus Edvard Nielsen, Product Lead

Magnus is a product lead with 10+ years experience in building technology products, teams and companies in both B2B and B2C. He has a strong focus on lean methodologies; build, test and learn to stay close to customers, new market trends, increase product quality and speed of development. A Strong passion for web3, complex digital products, getting from “zero to one” and building a sustainable future for our planet.

In June 2019 traveled to Indonesia for research on Indonesian farmers within rice, coffee, coconut sugar.

From 2017-2021 Leading the innovation team, at one of the biggest PaaS companies within digital supply chains named Tradeshift. The innovation teams two focus areas was decentralized technology and environmental sustainability.

Involvement: Leading the product strategy and design

Link: www.linkedin.com/in/magnusedvard/

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Yoram Ben Zvi, business models lead and connect to the Cardano ecosystem.

20+ years of business experience working with technology companies (strategy, partnerships, investors). In the last years, Yoram is focused on combining impact and business. 4 years ago he left his comfort zone and worked for 2 years for an NGO Earthworm.org focusing on sustainable business models across agriculture supply chains.Yoram is very active in Catalyst as a CA, successful proposer, and at Cardano4Climate. Yoram is part of the AIM team and is involved with the Catalyst SDG tool cardanocataly.st/proposer-tool-sdg/#/ (which is included in the proposal process) and the catalyst alignment to SDG research. 

Yoram was working on a related project in Indonesia for one year with Earthworm.org together with Magnus and understand the opportunity and the importance of impacting the agri supply chains  

Involvement: Leading ecosystem and business model development.

Link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoram-ben-zvi-446836/

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Alex Pestchanker, Development Lead 

has 20+ years of experience building Digital Products and Companies. He has a dual background, on one side a Solutions Architect and Developer (Cloud, Blockchain, C#, .NET, Java, Angular, DevOps) and on the other side a Company Builder and Advisor, building high-performance teams to deliver products that customers love (Customer Development, Agile, Lean, Design Thinking). Alex is also a professor and public speaker, helping to build common knowledge around Digital Transformation, Exponential Organizations, and Abundance. 

Within Cardano, Alex is an active community member, helping now to build the LATAM ecosystem, performed as Community Advisor since F6, with high ratings on his assessments, and funded proposer

Involvement: Alex will manage the development team with existing devs residing in Argentina. We also have other developers we are collaborating with and that can support the project on a consultant basis.

Link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/apestchanker

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WADA, local support lead and feedback for localisation of technology

WADA gives voice and access to people of African heritage and interest by providing the tools to reimagine new socioeconomic models in a way that reflects local cultures, values and future aspirations. Although our focus is on Africa, WADA is an all inclusive organization structured to provide seekers with providers. This is done with a focus on decentralization, self-organization and distributive governance.

Involvement:

WADA has team members based in Ghana and northern Ghana nearby the project. The WADA team will help to design the solution and validate the solution is suitable for the local market as well as with relevant connections.

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Time management

As team members are presenting multiple proposals in this fund as well as in previous funds here is an explanation regarding the time management:

• The Pond Foundation - multiple collaborators and will grow as needed
• Magnus: 20% time on the project focusing on leading the product to fit the use case and strategy
• Yoram: here is a link for an explanation of workload management. Overall for this project, Yoram will serve as an admin and business/marketing coordinator

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

Yes. We are building a decentralized product with different dapps to support multiple use cases within agricultural supply chains and environmental conservation. The product will benefit greatly with support from the greater Cardano community.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

We are committed to be transparent throughout the whole project and all deliverables will be available for the community either on Github or Google drive. We will do a monthly progress reports where we aim to report on the the following KPIs:

• Team status
• Features work on
• Stakeholders engaged
• Product usage numbers:
• # NGO users
• # Farmers created
• # Farmer usage
• # Carbon removal credits
• App usage

Outcome KPIS (after project is released):

• Onboard 25 Ghanian farmers into the platform.
• Create unique DIDs for those farmers and their lands.
• Document the LANDS associated with those farmers, identifying Status, Type of Project, Type of fertilizer.
• Create and Mint one NFT per LAND.
• Each farmer getting a Wallet on the platform.

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

The project success will be delivering the first version of an Android app for The Pond Foundation’s team members to support the Ghanian farmers to get a digital identity, wallet, knowledge and support for earning an income from regenerative farming and carbon removal. All relevant data will be made publicly available on the Cardano blockchain for every community member, journalist, registry, compliance officer etc. to review. We want to prove it is possible to complaint by being radically transparent.

Novel and viable applications and products get built on top of Cardano attracting users. Integrations manage to pull in more adoption.

Marketplaces - Total number of users, number of transactions performed

Nation governance systems - Amount of population onboarded, amount of costs saved due to new solution, security difficulty improvements over previous approach

Environment - Total number of users, total CO2 sequestered, amount of awareness being produced, number of people changing an environmentally damaging habit

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

21st century agri supply chain:

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/403695 

and also NGO transparency: 

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/403633

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

SDG goals:

Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

Goal 15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

SDG subgoals:

13.1 Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries

13.2 Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning

13.b Promote mechanisms for raising capacity for effective climate change-related planning and management in least developed countries and small island developing States, including focusing on women, youth and local and marginalized communities

15.3 By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world

15.9 By 2020, integrate ecosystem and biodiversity values into national and local planning, development processes, poverty reduction strategies and accounts

15.a Mobilize and significantly increase financial resources from all sources to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity and ecosystems

15.b Mobilize significant resources from all sources and at all levels to finance sustainable forest management and provide adequate incentives to developing countries to advance such management, including for conservation and reforestation

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

13.2.1 Number of countries with nationally determined contributions, long-term strategies, national adaptation plans and adaptation communications, as reported to the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

13.2.2 Total greenhouse gas emissions per year

13.b.1 Number of least developed countries and small island developing States with nationally determined contributions, long-term strategies, national adaptation plans and adaptation communications, as reported to the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

15.3.1 Proportion of land that is degraded over total land area

15.a.1 (a) Official development assistance on conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity; and (b) revenue generated and finance mobilized from biodiversity-relevant economic instruments

15.b.1 (a) Official development assistance on conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity; and (b) revenue generated and finance mobilized from biodiversity-relevant economic instruments

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