GrowSpot

Problem Statement

Climate change has rendered traditional agricultural wisdom obsolete. In regions like Southern China, once-fertile rice paddies are becoming arid and brittle, signaling a global trend of land degradation. This shift creates a dangerous "information gap"

Institutional Knowledge is Failing: Professional farmers can no longer rely on generational patterns as precipitation and soil health (NDVI) fluctuate unpredictably.

Barriers to Entry: For hobbyists and home gardeners looking to live sustainably, the technical data required to succeed, such as soil moisture gradients and meteorological trends is often inaccessible or too complex to interpret.

This lack of environmental awareness directly threatens UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education) and Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities). When crops fail due to poor environmental alignment, the result is a localized domino effect of malnutrition and poverty.

Solution

To bridge the gap between complex climate data and actionable insight, we developed GrowSpot.

Growspot is an intelligent agricultural risk-assessment tool that aggregates real-time data from the Open-Meteo API including historical rainfall, temperature fluctuations, and soil moisture levels alongside NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) data.

While raw environmental data can be overwhelming, GrowSpot leverages watsonx.ai hosting the granite-8b-code-instruct model to act as an analytical bridge. The AI interprets these multifaceted data streams to Calculate Risk: Determine the viability of specific crops in a targeted micro-climate. Provide Context: Explain why a crop is at risk, offering suggestions for more suitable alternatives. Democratize Agriculture: Empower both industrial farmers and home gardeners with professional-grade insights, ensuring food security in an era of climatic instability.

What we learned

We had a lot of ideas, and we learned when to bail on an idea, and when to pivot. We focused on geographic technology, originally trying to go for a flood map idea, then pivoting to agriculture and landing on a tool that assesses the agricultural quality of any area in the world to help people and farmers who are looking to grow plants and crops.

Built With

• isricsoilgrids
• leaflet.js
• modis
• open-metero
• python
• react
• typescript
• watsonx