Farmstand

Inspiration

According to the US Department of Agriculture, while “small local-food farms are the most numerous, larger farms [still] account for the greatest share of local food sales.” Our inspiration stems from the belief that supporting local, sustainable farms not only improves our community but also contributes to a healthier planet. By choosing local, you reduce your carbon footprint, support fair wages for farmers, and ensure that fresh, nutritious produce is available to all.

What it does

Farmstand is a dynamic business-to-consumer platform that connects local farmers and consumers by creating a virtual farmers market experience. We empower small, sustainable farms by giving them direct access to customers who value fresh, locally sourced produce. Through Farmstand, consumers can easily find farm-fresh goods while supporting local economies. It’s not just a marketplace – Farmstand is a movement to reconnect communities with the sources of their food and promote sustainable agriculture.

How we built it

We used React for the frontend, Tailwind for styling, and Node/Express for the backend. We chose Supabase for our database management system due to its robust features and ease of use, and we used Vercel for deployment.

Challenges we ran into

As most of us had never used Tailwind before, we had to learn its utility-first approach from scratch. Additionally, we faced some challenges with database integration and deployment, which required a fair amount of troubleshooting.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re really proud that we were able to build a full, working, webapp from end-to-end that makes it easier for consumers to access fresh local produce. We believe that Farmstand has a lot of potential to improve local produce accessibility.

What we learned

Our team also was comprised primarily of frontend developers, so learning how to build and query a RESTful API was definitely a learning experience. In addition to strengthening our skills in fullstack development, we all definitely became much more skilled at navigating Git version control in a team with many members working on several different features at once.

What's next for Farmstand

We have a lot of exciting new features we’re looking forward to including in the near future! We plan to integrate account authentication with Google OAuth 2.0, payment methods with Stripe, distance to nearby farms using Google Maps API. We’re also exploring ways to incorporate user feedback to further improve the user experience and expand our platform to support more farms.