Build A Farmer's Future

Real time impact to farmers of America

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Inspiration

Farming is a vital and in demand career, but it comes with risks to the farmworkers. Our mission is directly informed by the needs of farmers in America. We present a vision of improvement of individual farms' Injury and Illness Prevention Programs. While such programs do exist, it is not doing nearly enough to provide self manageable health improvements for this critical group.

What it does

Our Web application will take information such as temperature outside, as well as water consumption of farmhands and provide recommendations to amend their respective Injury and Illness Prevention Programs.

The web app will, in practice, also have a sister app that collects field data from Crew Leaders (information already currently collected such as break times, and general quality of farmhands). Farmhands will also have access to this sister app, although with limited accessibility, only being able to view daily suggestions based on the weather forecast as well as a functionality to submit suggestions, complaints, concerns, etc. to Crew Leaders. This web application also benefits OSHA as it improves the health of farmhands uniquely to each farm, allowing more program flexibility to farm supervisors and shifting from less and more generalized programs to more unique and dynamic programs.

How we built it

The software we will be developing will collect self-reported data and API weather data to calculate health risks and provide recommendations. Crew leaders will be inputting information into our web app which includes break times, water consumption and working conditions e.g. hard labor v. machinery. The given weather data will predict possibilities of heat stroke. Our software will provide direct, real time impact and considerations to improve individual farms by better work conditions.

Design

Platform: Windows OS
Farmers View:
• Productivity
• H2O Consumption
• Temperature/Weather Forecast
• Statistical Analysis; distribution graphs, daily suggestions
Crew Leader View:
• Weather/Forecast
• Daily Suggestions
Crew Leader Input Form:
• Break Times of Workers
• Health-related incidents
Farmworkers:
• Weather/Daily suggestions
• Urine Chart
• Input for anonymous complaints, suggestions, concerns, etc.
Architecture:
The data will be input from, collectively, a weather service API and the Crew Leaders. The data will then be sent to a database, which will be used to organize the data to create distributions and probabilities to then send to the farm supervisor along with statistic statements to tailor the Injury and Illness Prevention Program of that particular farm. The weather information will be available to all and provide daily suggestions such as water reminders, heat advisories, UV index, and pollen intensity of the area.
Crew Leaders will have input forms in the sister app to input accident information as well as break times to measure productivity as a ratio of overall worktime and overall break time. The farmhands under these leaders will also have access to the weather suggestions and a urine chart to monitor dehydration.

Challenges we ran into

One limitation present is lack of available information, since wearable technology is not being implemented as to retain the anonymity and prevent unreliable data from being transmitted, such as only a portion of the farmhands, thus skewing averages and other statistic values. The reason for this decision is because even if the wearables retained anonymity, it would be cumbersome to the actual work of the farmhand. We would not like to force farmhands to wear, for instance a wristband, as it may get caught while picking produce, or performing machine maintenance.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The farm supervisors benefit from this web app by receiving analyzed data and a resulting analysis in the form of statistical values correlating with previous records.

What we learned

While a wearable device tracking activity will provide more accurate data, it is impossible to make the farmers wear it. Even if disclosing all the information being obtained, some workers many not be comfortable with this invasion of privacy.

What's next for Build A Farmer's Future

Continuous improvement of our software will provide recommendations from a larger database. We will be able to record more data using ambient sensors. Light and proximity sensors will provide more information metrics to measure productivity of the farmworkers. We can develop additional software for a mobile app to collect data such as movement activity, pulse/ ECG heart-data, and self-reported data that will sync to our web app.

Team Lead

Team Lead: Martin Reyes
UI Design: Joaquin
API: Guillermo
Programming: David, Margarita, Martin

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