Inspiration
Growing up in India, we know what it's like to be a farmer here & by extension, around the globe. As someone who's relatives are farmers as well, I know what the struggles can be like. Farmers globally work tirelessly day & night to support their families, yet due to the shady tactics of middleman & consumers not being aware, they lose out on the profit. Millions of farmers worldwide are suffering as a result, we knew we had to make a solution.
What it does
LocalHarvest offers farmers a platform to sell their products directly to the consumers. Consumers can log in & see a variety of options. They can search by product, or they can search by farmers. They can click on farmers & see their profiles where they'll see the farmers history & their whole list of products. Farmers can set their rates, update their stock, see their analytics, & manage everything through a dashboard. Users can purchase products straight on the app as well. This way, the farmers skip the middlemen & keep more of the profit, while users pay less overall as they avoid the inflation tactics of middlemen & are ensured that their food is fresh & clean.
How we built it
We built LocalHarvest using a lot of tools which includes Flutter, Dart, Firebase, Figma, Gemini, etc. We started by designing the application and its layout on Figma. LocalHarvest was a 2 layered application as it had consumers and farmers. Firebase was a great option for managing the backend of the application as it provides authentication, storage, and a database in form of Firebase Firestore. We have also used Gemini to add an AI touch to the application. Flutter is a framework that allows developers to create cross platform applications with help of Dart programming language. The application shows the past 3 years of software development skills of mine with Flutter.
Challenges we ran into
We ran into some challenges with design. We spent a lot of time on Figma mockups to ensure that we had the best UX product & the app was the easiest-to-use possible for both farmers & buyers. We also had some struggles trying to code such a thorough application, however through persistent hard work, we were able to overcome this. We kept thinking of the farmers we could help through this, & the people we could alleviate out of poverty, so that was great motivation.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of making something truly impactful. As it's something so close to home, I feel like I'm truly giving back to my family & beyond. I've always wanted to work on a product that is both technically difficult & has a massive community impact, so this was a great way to do it. We were very proud of the hard work we put in, as we were able to code this whole platform in such little time as well.
What we learned
We learned a lot about design & frontend. We learned many new tools & also had to overcome some challenges with getting the database working. Throughout, we watched tutorials, read manuals, & skilled up as much as possible. It was a great learning experience.
What's next for LocalHarvest
A LOT
We plan to make this the real deal. We want to launch this soon to farmers & actually get this project going. We'll be looking to partner with local government & non-profit organizations so we can get this project rolling. We also want to implement this worldwide, specifically in the USA, Canada, & India. We want to help farmers, & we won't stop until we've done just that.
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