FarmVine

Challenge Track 3: COVID-19 and the Environment

Link to slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1FIxhddIeoI55g82m0H6lDeLTn9QEeFf__7yBsg-GODg/edit?usp=sharing

Inspiration

Before the covid-19 pandemic, food waste had already become a monumental issue in the US, as Americans wasted up to 40% of total food produced domestically. However, after covid-19 reached the US, rates of food waste have increased even further. As the food insecure could have potentially used food that has been wasted, and as food waste contributes to climate change, we wanted to build a platform for farmers to connect to food banks to share their surplus.

What it does

FarmVine provides a social networking platform for farmers and food banks to establish food supply partnerships. Farmers can post what surplus agricultural products they have, while food banks can reach out to farmers to procure foodstuffs. Our platform minimizes the time needed to call farmers or food banks individually, and helps build lasting partnerships in a difficult, socially distanced time caused by COVID.

How we built it

We used Figma to build our web user interface. We also created a logo for FarmVine in Canva to build a brand around the UI.

Challenges we ran into

Given the time we had for the hackathon, a major challenge was having enough time to validate our product and obtain primary research that clarified farmers’ and food banks’ pain points. As well, it was difficult to identify feasible partnership opportunities at first, although we were able to find great possibilities with some more detailed resources.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We successfully created a web platform that provides both chat features as well as a geospatial map component so that food banks and farmers can find potential partnerships in their area.

What we learned

We learned a great deal about food waste, one of the lesser known environmental issues facing our planet. While there are multiple avenues to tackle climate change, we as individuals need to also consider how much waste we produce every day, and this includes the food we leave on our plates, the ingredients that go bad in our fridge, etc. But food waste also occurs along the supply chain when farmers can’t sell the food they produced. As food waste is becoming a more prominent issue in the time of covid-19, we also learned the importance of supply chain networks in bringing together different individuals and organizations to tackle environmental issues.

What's next for Food Waste

We hope this platform helps mitigate the amount of food waste we generate in the US every year by helping farmers find an avenue to share their abundance with the larger community. We also hope that FarmVine can also one day break into the food industry. This might mean helping farmers find new restaurant clients as well as helping redirect food waste from restaurants and other food establishments to charities and nonprofits.

Built With

• figma