Urban Farmer dApp Phase II

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

We would like to thank the Cardano Community for trusting us to build our tool, by funding us successfully in Fund 8. The MVP functionality for UI/UX design is on track for successful completion in July of 2022. This request is for additional functionality for the application.

Our team has grown to include a hardware developer with 12 years of experience and municipal deployment experience. We have also added an additional full stack developer with over 30 years programming experience for the main dApp code.

Interested parties may contact the team for a demonstration of the existing features.

Functionality

• App to provide system construction information.
• App to provide growing instructions for specific crops, tailored to size of space available.
• App to provide an API to collect data from environmental systems and IOT sensors.
• App to provide an API to collect harvest data.
• App to provide an ML and Human support interface to suggest improvements from environmental information and sensors to improve harvests.
• App to provide a community interface that allows nearby purchasers to find active urban farms in their area and place orders for produce.
• App to provide full food traceability on block chain, automatically.
• App to facilitate payments with Strip for fiat, as well as ADA between purchaser and farm to support fiat on ramp, as well as for farm to pay for subscription to services through either ADA or Fiat.
• App to provide dispatch services to equipment owners who need onsite technical help.

Demographics

Primary users are small urban farm operators that have or wish to build 10,000 square feet or less of urban, vertical farm to feed their local community within a 20-mile radius of their location.

Action Plan

Complete development of the Farm Management back end, where a farmer can specify and maintain their grow environments.

Complete development of the dispatch tool, which will allow farmers to assist one another with either technical or on farm assistance. This opens a new incentive model for users of the system.

Complete development of the Farm Learning back end, which trains and certifies farmers on growing techniques, farm practices, and sanitation/hygiene.

Complete development of the IoT farm stack, a specialized environment monitoring and management tool that is customized for vertical environments. This tool is both hardware and software based.

Future action plan items beyond this point will require additional funding from future catalyst rounds, or other means.

Complete the development of the ML front end, which will begin providing query-response with practical improvements to an individual farmer, by evaluating their dataset.

Complete development of the Coop marketplace. Allowing farmers to buy and sell futures contracts for their produce.

We will open the beta version of the app to the first ten names on our waitlist. If necessary, we will continue to move down the waitlist until we have 10 active farms. We will add up to 5 additional farms each month until side chain releases.

We will begin utilizing PlutusV2 and begin experimenting in generating the sidechain testnet for our code to utilize the RESI native token to fuel the cardano-node side chain. We will ensure that the sidechain properly reports to mainnet in accordance with best practices.

We will release the app to the remainder of the waitlist after sufficient testing on RESI Testnet.

We will launch RESI mainnet once there is sufficient adoption.

We will seek certification of the app at the highest possible level according to IOG standards.

We will build the DAO and transfer assets to it.

Roadmap and Milestones

• Farm Management Backend will be feature complete by October 2022.
• Dispatch Tool will be fully integrated by November 2022.
• Farm Learning tool will be fully integrated by November 2022.
• Implementation of IoT stack and integration to be fully completed by December 2022.

Key Performance Indicators

By End of Month December 2022, We intend to have at least 10 small farms in different regions utilizing the dApp for management of their farms. These initial test users will allow us to further refine the systems experience and tweak the ML algorithms. This is a slight delay from the Fund 8 milestone, but we felt a broader feature set would entice more farmers to fully implement the system.

By End of Year 2022 we intend to have our native token RESI accepted by the dApp and our sidechain stake pool systems operational. We expect to grow by 5 new farms per month until end of year 2023, controlling access to the system via a waiting list.

By End of Year 2023 we intend to move the source code of the system and management responsibility of the system into a DAO and allow the community to drive the future of the system via democratic action.

Skills Required

We have identified the following technical skills as necessary to the successful development and deployment of our dApp:

• Adobe XD Operation
• .NET Programming
• Bootstrap 5
• Python Programming
• Plutus Programming
• Stakepool Operation
• Cardano API access (Phyrhose License Approved)
• IoT Management
• Data Warehousing Operation
• Serverless Infrastructure Management
• AWS Lambda
• AWS SageMaker Operation
• AWS Infrastructure Management

We believe that with over 25 years of IT management from one co-founder, and the entrepreneurship degree and retail management experience of the other co-founder, that we have sufficient business knowledge to successfully operate and hire the remaining development team that we will need as we scale up. We believe that our two core developers each with over 30 years of business programming experience are vital to the success of the operation. Our new hardware developer has over 12 years of experience and has deployed hardware platforms for municipalities.

We acknowledge that AWS infrastructure does not suffice for true decentralization and look forward to a future where we can access more decentralized tools that replace the current functionality available at AWS. Our goal will remain that we will decentralize components at the earliest opportunity to do so.

Key Staff

• Melannie Duhon CEO: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melannie-duhon

Extensive retail management experience. Entrepreneurship degree with Agribusiness minor from FGCU. Owner/Operator of Living Greens Urban Farm

• Eric Montgomery Senior Programmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric996/

Full stack developer with over 30 years of experience building business applications at institutional levels.

• Lloyd Duhon Systems Architect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lloyd-duhon

25 Year IT veteran, CTO experience. Cardano Plutus Pioneer 2nd Cohort. Tokhun Community Lead, DripDropz Communications Manager, Adosia Communications Manager.

• Paul Spata Senior Programmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fortifygroup/

Full stack developer with over 30 years of experience building business applications.

• Juno Duhon Hardware Developer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juno-duhon-095bb4124/

Hardware developer with 12 years of experience, with municipal deployment experience.

Budget Breakdown

Funding in this round will go directly towards building additional features to the core application. This production round is multi-disciplined, and requires project management, technical writing, and content creation.

• Farm Management Backend. $60,000 (2 Developers, Project Management, Technical Writer)
• Dispatch Tool. $30,000 (1 Developer, Project Manager, Technical writer)
• Farm Learning tool. $55,000 (1 Developer, Project Manager, Technical Writer, Content Producer)
• Implementation of IoT stack and integration. $30,000 (1 Developer, Project Manager, Technical writer)

Acquired Funding

• The team has already acquired $6000 in AWS credits to support development over the next two years.
• The team has acquired a grant from FGCU for $3800 to purchase water automation equipment.
• The team has acquired a grant from Cardano Proxies for 350 ADA to purchase IoT automation equipment.
• The team received $15,000 from Catalyst Fund 8.

Completed Steps

• We completed developing the wireframe UI/UX for the application itself, based upon deep industry knowledge and the expected feature list that is outlined above.
• We are currently in active development refining the product back ends to handle dispatch and to manage crop rotations.
• We have successfully implemented our testnet node for NFTs, and integrated it into our app.
• We built the code necessary to query the testnet blockchain to display food traceability standards.

Questions

What problem are you solving?

Food Insecurity is a global problem, with far reaching implications. Families who don’t have enough to eat will suffer in every other domain. We educate and improve access to highly nutritious food, leading to food sovereignty for end users. 

How are you solving the above problem?

Our hyper local food production process in urban areas has a positive influence on the environment through reduced water usage, mediated soil depletion, less fossil fuel usage, and reducing the amount of land required for farming.

We are building a decentralized application that provides several key solutions:

• Provide crop growing education to potential urban farmers. 
• Support urban farmer crop management.
• Troubleshoot growth cycle problems. 
• Trace crop production to ensure compliance with regulations.
• Cultivate a hyper local bidirectional decentralized marketplace:
• Connect urban farmers with their community. 
• Connect community to locally sourced food.

Why did you choose to build your dApp on Cardano?

Cardano offers unparalleled stability and scalability for our dApp. There is an extraordinary focus on emerging markets by Cardano. Cardano has a working ethos that encourages development. Cardano provides a more scientific and thoroughly researched approach to managing the blockchain. These key elements of the ecosystem really support the development of applications that will thrive in a decentralized fashion. Our dApp is ultimately a massive global food production co-op when we execute it correctly. We could not hope to succeed in this endeavor without the solid foundation that we have in Cardano.

Anything else you'd like to add that you think is important about your project?

We look forward to continuing building the tools that will have a positive impact. We are all bringing the power of decentralized applications to a hungry world, to help build social advancement, economic opportunity, and responsible environmental stewardship.

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

This dApp will create a substantial use case for the Cardano ecosystem from a new source of potential end users. The proposal directly addresses the key metric of increasing the number of dapps and products available for the community to use that help to enrich the ecosystem with new use cases. This new use case will drive new adoption through incentives and organic growth.

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

Full deployment of this dApp requires side chain capabilities with Cardano. We list this as a prerequisite to a successful deployment. If this is delayed, we will be delayed as well.

Another challenge is adoption for small farmers. We will need to localize our tool and education materials to a wide variety of languages to gain widespread adoption. We intend to build proposals and offer RESI incentives to fund localization efforts.

Marketing to small farmers is a necessary requirement. This team is active with social media groups that are related to Urban farming and will need to be even more active in this area to spread awareness of the product and continue to build the waitlist.

Regulatory changes for agriculture and blockchain also present risks for continuing operation.

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

• Farm Management Backend will be feature complete by October 2022.
• Dispatch Tool will be fully integrated by November 2022.
• Farm Learning tool will be fully integrated by November 2022.
• Implementation of IoT stack and integration to be fully completed by December 2022.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Funding in this round will go directly towards building additional features to the core application. This production round is multi-disciplined, and requires project management, technical writing, and content creation. This round will require six (6) full time staff for approximately 120 days.

• Farm Management Backend. $60,000 (2 Developers, Project Management, Technical Writer)
• Dispatch Tool. $30,000 (1 Developer, Project Manager, Technical writer)
• Farm Learning tool. $55,000 (1 Developer, Project Manager, Technical Writer, Content Producer)
• Implementation of IoT stack and integration. $30,000 (1 Developer, Project Manager, Technical writer)

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

• Melannie Duhon CEO: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melannie-duhon

Extensive retail management experience. Entrepreneurship degree with Agribusiness minor from FGCU. Owner/Operator of Living Greens Urban Farm

• Eric Montgomery Senior Programmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric996/

Full stack developer with over 30 years of experience building business applications at institutional levels.

• Lloyd Duhon Systems Architect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lloyd-duhon

25 Year IT veteran, CTO experience. Cardano Plutus Pioneer 2nd Cohort. Tokhun Community Lead, DripDropz Communications Manager, Adosia Communications Manager.

• Paul Spata Senior Programmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fortifygroup/

Full stack developer with over 30 years of experience building business applications.

• Juno Duhon Hardware Developer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juno-duhon-095bb4124/

Hardware developer with 12 years of experience, with municipal deployment experience.

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

Yes, this project is funded by Catalyst in Fund 8. We are asking for funds again in Fund 9. We do believe that there are other opportunities to fund enhancements to the application in future rounds, including localization, additional content creation, and added features.

[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?

The team will use a combination of git and trello to manage the project's progress. The project manager will prepare and submit the monthly reports to Catalyst with percent completed on the milestones listed. 

The team currently meets regularly six (6) times per week across various teams. We regularly track relevant action items, tasks, needs and progress and we adapt as necessary.

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

A world with food sovereignty instead of food insecurity. Small farmers providing local produce to the people who live near them, safely, efficiently, and fresh. This phase will be considered complete when the above milestones are reached.

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

This is a continuation of the Fund 8 Urban Farmer dApp proposal which was successfully funded for $15,000 USD for proof of concept/MVP.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

SDG goals:

Goal 2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

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

SDG subgoals:

11.3 By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries

11.c Support least developed countries, including through financial and technical assistance, in building sustainable and resilient buildings utilizing local materials

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

2.2 By 2030, end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving, by 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older persons

2.a 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

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

11.3.1 Ratio of land consumption rate to population growth rate

11.3.2 Proportion of cities with a direct participation structure of civil society in urban planning and management that operate regularly and democratically

13.1.1 Number of deaths, missing persons and directly affected persons attributed to disasters per 100,000 population

13.1.2 Number of countries that adopt and implement national disaster risk reduction strategies in line with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030

13.1.3 Proportion of local governments that adopt and implement local disaster risk reduction strategies in line with national disaster risk reduction strategies

2.2.1 Prevalence of stunting (height for age under -2 standard deviation from the median of the World Health Organization (WHO) Child Growth Standards) among children under 5 years of age

2.2.2 Prevalence of malnutrition (weight for height greater than +2 or less than -2 standard deviation from the median of the WHO Child Growth Standards) among children under 5 years of age, by type (wasting and overweight)

2.a.1 The agriculture orientation index for government expenditures

2.2.3 Prevalence of anaemia in women aged 15 to 49 years, by pregnancy status (percentage)

2.a.2 Total official flows (official development assistance plus other official flows) to the agriculture sector