cultivate

🧑‍🌾 What is urban farming

Urban farming is the act of farming, usually crops, in an urban setting. This means that there is limited space, resources, and materials for these farmers, who just want to provide for their family and community. As climate change worsens and gas prices increase, urban farmers are becoming increasingly important in the development of sustainable cities.

⚡ Inspiration

One of the toughest jobs in our current economy is the urban farmer. They have to compete with rural farmers, who often have large amounts of land, advanced machinery, and consistent buyers. This makes it almost impossible to support one's family with only profit from urban farming. This is why we created Cultivate. Cultivate gives urban farmers a platform to post their crops and harvests, and for buyers to browse and purchase home-grown produce.

🌍 The impact of buying produce through Urban Farming

Many large-scale, rural farms across the globe use inhumane farming techniques, pesticides, non-vegan products, and unenvironmentally friendly methods of transport. When you buy locally grown, the food only needs to travel a short distance to get to your doorstep, as opposed to across the world. You can ensure that you'll be buying pesticide-free, vegan products that were grown by one of your neighbours. Additionally, you will boost your local economy and give back to others in your community, possibly allowing them to pursue passions that they couldn't before.

💪 What it does

Cultivate gives a welcoming, feels-like-home platform for urban farmers to post about their crops. For example, Farmer Jeff posts about his newly grown potatoes, which he's listing for $10 on Cultivate. Daniel, wanting to eat a nice potato dinner with his family, contacts Farmer Jeff through Cultivate and purchases the product. Just like websites like Kijiji, the actual exchange of the item is up to the buyer and seller. Cultivate allows urban farmers to gain a sustainable income through posting their harvests on the website. It slows climate change

🧠 How we built it

We used React, JavaScript, and SASS to create Cultivate. We hosted it with Netlify here

❓ Challenges we ran into

Originally, we were planning on using Appwrite for the backend. We found it quite difficult to connect it and make API requests. Additionally, we were unable to start up Docker and create an Appwrite project. We hope to see some clearer instructions on using Appwrite in a hackathon project in the future.

🌾 What's next for Cultivate

We hope that Cultivate will be launched into the nationwide ecosystem of urban farmers. Our goal is to impact the lives of some of these hardworking individuals positively. Maybe one day, global issues like population growth and climate change will be fought against through urban farming and Cultivate.