Agricate

Inspiration

Originally, we wanted to solve the agricultural middleman pricing problem, but we found most farmers don't have enough food to feed their families, let alone, sell in the open market. After talking to the Free The Children reps, we found they had a data collection problem that preceded providing giving best practices.

What it does

Collect standardized data from farmers and sends customized and timely farming best practices to farmers.

How I built it

We wanted to build a more transactional SMS workflow, which is not supported out-of-the-box by most providers, so we've used a flask server backed by firebase to enable real-time data synchronization.

Challenges I ran into

Finding farming best practices, as many experienced farmers still don't have access to any.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We became experts on growing Maize, you know, in case this startup thing doesn't work out.

What I learned

Planting maize two seasons in a row can increase the risk of MLN disease, and can strip all of the nitrogen from the soil. We learned that rotating the crop to Mungbeans, can help replenish the nitrogen in the soil.