AgriHub | Farming for Sustainability

An AI-driven web platform that educates & connects learners, farmers with location-based crop compatability, trusted resources/ businesses, hence fosters sustainability in agriculture & farming.

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Inspiration

Our Problem Statement: According to the FAO’s statistics, by 2050, the global population will reach 9.7 billion, requiring a 60% increase in Food Production overall. Acknowledging that, our group - VNPT (VietNamese Protocol) recognizes there is a need for incrementing global food production to catch up with the surge in demand for food. Doing research, we also found out the many regions worldwide are operating below their potential agriculturally, taking the significant example of Sub-Saharan Africa with only 20-40% potential yields for key crops recorded. Furthermore, there exists many natural resources that are inefficiently utilized, namely 33% of arable land is degraded, impacting productivity; 14% of food is lost post-harvest; wasting resources eventually,...

Our Vision & Mission: Looking over these existing problems, VNPT figured some of the most impactful cause of these incidents lies mainly in the lack of knowledge, which crop is suitable for growing in which region and how resources could be accessed and maximized during the farming processes. With that initiatives, we decided to create a platform called AgriHub which gives out these farming knowledge, brings together farmers (or learners) with suitable resources and business firms in the area with services necessary for their farming process. With the incorporation of various AI tools, we believe that this platform would help educate more people to be interested in agriculture, and help registered local service providers to match and be exposed to their potential customers, trying to help meet the world’s demand for food in overall, while also help maintain sustainability as users know the appropriate quantity to use for each crop, which helps prevent future waste of resources. Due to the shortage of time, we have scaled our based location being the United States with metrics being City, County, State for the crop matching functionality. Though, this project is feasible for upscaling for a globalized crop advising feature.

What it does

Overall, AgriHub - the Agricultural Hub is expected to benefit both users (farmers/ learners) and local agricultural service providers.

Users:

  • After pressing “Getting Started” Button, they are prompted to Input a location (in this case City, County, and State within the US). Then the AI recommendation feature would recommend the users with the top 3 crops that could be grown within their based location. Within each crop, users are also provided with:

A short description of the crop & its scientific name Reasons it is suitable within this region Advices/ notice for crop farming: Watering frequencies, Pesticides, Fertilizers Amount,... Estimated Average Cost for Growing the Crop (For Entrepreneurs) Resources needed for Farmers: including verified local businesses by our system, and/or AI-suggested resources links for purchasing those agricultural facilities (Ex: seed providers, watering systems installation firms,....)

By that, the users could know more about the crops that are suitable for growing in their region, having informed knowledge about how to plant them, and get access to various nearby resources service providers that they may need to implement their farming process.

Local businesses and Web Page Admin Roles:

  • Purpose of The AgriHub’s Trustees Verification Process: Businesses and Local Firms Register to be Verified by our System (AI Scanned Report - and Verified by an actual Website Administrator). Firms are rated on different criteria on their reputations within their fields, customers review,... to decide if they are recommended by our website to farmers or not. If they are verified, they are more likely to be suggested and advertised to users and eventually gain more customers.

  • Step-by-step registration process for business for AgriHub’s verification process constitutes:

  • Clicking to “Business” on the Menu bar, local service providers firms are required to fill out a form which ask:

Business Name Address Phone Email Website URL Date of Establishment Business Type: (Seed Supplier, Equipment Rental,...)

The upper information is then collected and sent to the Administrator’s Dashboard. In addition, the business name is detected, searched and analyzed by our AI to create another Report to Put on the Administrator’s Dashboard. Combining these 2 features, the Administrator of AgriHub would determine if the Business meets the necessary standards and should be recommended to users on our system or not. The Admin decides by clicking the buttons (Accept/Reject). If “Accepted”, the Business information would be added to our back-end database, and could be later suggested to users in their later crop searches.

This system creates an initiative for Businesses to constantly improve their operations and prove their legitimacies for being benefited from our suggesting system. Also, the ultimate purpose is to give users (farmers) an extra filter on where to safely purchase their farming facilities if needed.

How we built it

We used AI and machine learning to generate crop recommendations and match entrepreneurs with service providers. The platform integrates geospatial data for location-based insights and employs web technologies.

In order to incorporate AI-powered recommendations within this project and construct a website with these upper complex functionalities, we have utilized a wide variety of technologies, frameworks, platforms, APIs, Cloud Services, … Front-End: html, css, javascript, canva… Back-End: node.js, express.js, axios, open-ai, json-server, … We also use Canva to help with design Wireframes, and background image for our main site.

Challenges we ran into

Our teams have members specialized in diverse aspects of tech, ranging from front-end developer, back-end developer, to technical consultant and designer... Hence, to effectively work with each other within 24 hours, we had to sketch out a detailed action plan, with each person capturing a certain responsibility. We encountered some delay during the ideation phase, spending 2 hours on selecting the most optimal solutions that we want to work on, and then spending the remaining time building the website interfaces, back-end systems to function as we wanted. Within the crafting process, we also faced some issues with the APIs installation from the OpenAI Cloud Service, merging branches among team members and incorporating appropriate AI prompts to give out the wanted result. Eventual connection between the front-end and back-end code also requires a lot of effort. However, we managed to complete the website within the Hackathon’s time frame.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Although being a group with a majority of freshmans & sophomores, we have successfully built an AI-driven recommendation system that provides tailored crop suggestions and business connections. The platform also includes a verification system for service providers, ensuring users can trust the businesses they interact with. Though there are still aspects that need improvement, we are proud of what we have accomplished by far and submitted a complete project with a complete website and description with our best efforts. We even spent the night at SELE to finish our project together and created a team spirit that would last beyond the final moment of this hackathon.

What we learned

Through this project, we gained valuable insights into integrating AI for sustainability, optimizing resource use in agriculture, and designing an intuitive web interface. We also learned the importance of verifying businesses to build a trustworthy ecosystem and how to leverage geospatial data for smarter decision-making. Our team also learned valuable team-working skills, communication, leverage our coding skills and applications of various technical tools from basic such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript to more advanced ones like Node.js, Express.js, Axios, OpenAI, JSon-Server,... to wholly craft the final product. This has been either a technical advancement, but also a social skills increment for each AgriHub’s developer team member.

What's next for AgriHub | Farming for Sustainability

As previously mentioned, due to a shortage of time in a 24-hour hackathon, our team has decided to scale our crop matching locations within states in the US. Hence, referring to further development within this project, there are endless possibilities:

  • To improve our project in the future, we plan to expand by using larger datasets that include countries worldwide, not just the US.
  • To fix and redesign the About Page, adding more statistics for the Inspiration for this project onto the website.
  • Redesign the crop match output to be more eye-catching and provide users with the most necessary information based on their needs.
  • Enhance accuracy in the AI Responses and Recommendations. -... .

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