ECOFARMS - Sustainable Agriculture through educating, connecting and consulting

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Proposal: ECOFARMS

An online platform (web/app based) with 3 main pillars.

Educating - Connecting - Consulting

The platform aims at spreading knowledge about and promoting sustainable agriculture in the form of permaculture.

PERMACULTURE: “Utilizing patterns and resilient features observed in natural ecosystems”. In practice, instead of growing a single plant on a field, permaculture aims at syntropy of plants → different plants growing on the same piece of land, benefiting each other (for example with nutrients), and making more efficient use of the environment (incoming sunlight, water, and soil).

Educating

The platform educates about the use of permaculture, with videos, workshops, reports, and a collection of literature on the topic. It offers suitable materials for beginners as well as advanced users, sorted by region/ climate zone. Information about downstream industries in the agriculture sector gives users the opportunity for local value creation beyond solely producing and selling raw food. (For example: how to make jam out of fruits; or how to process coffee beans.)

Connecting

The platform includes a user chat/ forum, whereas it connects users and enables peer to peer knowledge exchange.

Consulting

Consulting is an optional function and bookable for a fee. Based on the location of the customer, geographical data (latitude, longitude, elevation, precipitation, climate, terrain) is used to propose which crops in how much quantity should be grown in which part of the customers land. If applicable, sensor-based monitoring of crops is suggested.

Why?

The selling point of the concept is the benefits a transition from regular monoculture to permaculture can bring.

Current agriculture contributes heavily to global warming, monocultures overuse and degrades the soil, water shortages increase throughout the world, small farmers are dependant on agri-food industry giants for seeds and pesticides. While resistances of plants and pests demand new products at frequent intervals, health consequences of genetically modified food towards humans is still a topic of debate.

ECOFARMS promotes an alternative, offeríng

• A more resilient business through diversification of crops,
• Reduced use of water, fertilizers, and pesticides,
• Preservation of natural habitats, and biodiversity,
• Healthier soils and more sustainable production cycles.

To date knowledge about permaculture and its effectiveness is not very widespread. ECOFARMS aims at changing that to make agriculture sustainable again.

Anqi Shi, Anny Lim, Robin Rainer Barkhausen, Sameer Chourasia, Jane Christina Irawan,

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L8f6BipzYtzy3d_NyD8gB9U9HuZjuOfw/view

https://circulareconomy2019.wixsite.com/ecofarms

https://youtu.be/q4tHyOpp-wU

https://circulareconomy2019.wixsite.com/ecofarms