GREENEST

Most people do their groceries in well-known supermarkets, ignoring that its purchases increase the carbon footprint in exorbitant amounts, benefits big corporations and results in a minimal income for local producers. “GREENEST” is a self-sustaining agriculture collaboration network to cultivate and exchange sustainable food, managed by an app which combine IoT and AI to create a wonderful experience for each user. It does not matter that you are already have organic gardens at home or it is your first attempt to do it, we will be with you each step of the way.

Our target market is people who live in the city and want to start having healthier eating habits while helping the environment and be part of a sustainable food community in order to learn, share and exchange products with them.

“GREENEST: my food, your food our food”
Making the difference with 3T: Together, Today, Transcending.

According to the National Institute of Public Health (2007) Yucatan ranks first in obesity and diabetes in Mexico, some of the main reasons are:

• Absence of healthy eating habits.

• High costs of fruits and vegetables in current distribution chains.

• Ignorance of the benefits of self-consumption of sustainable products.

A mega trend of 2030 (Euromonitor International, 2017) is the “immediacy” in which consumers want to satisfy their needs and desires as soon as possible, hence the purchases of food in supermarkets is the most common. Unfortunately, this results in a sharp increase in the carbon footprint, great benefits for distributors, and minimal income for producers.

However, according to a PWC mega trends report in 2016, the reinvention of shopping is giving rise to "premiumization", that is, users seeking a unique experience in every purchase, as well as having a positive impact on the world, through a circular (3R) and collaborative (crowdsourcing) economy.

GREENEST is a self-sustaining agriculture collaboration network to cultivate and exchange sustainable food, managed by an app which combine IoT and AI to create a wonderful experience for each user and encourage them to be an active self-sustaining food member of this community. Our app has three main functions:

• Gather general information; profile user, location, pipeline of available and required products, production capacity, among others.
                                                                        Technology: Blockchain  

• Crowdsourcing; obtaining information, opinions and feedback from all our users is necessary to keep up to date the app. Either, producers and consumer will be rewarded to share their knowledge. 
                                                                       Technology: UX with AI

• Easy decision making; through an automatic data analytics suggestions and challenges will be sent to the users, such as, where is the closest exchange point, who has the products that you need, etc.
                                                         Technology:  AI and gamification

Our target market is people who live in the city, has access to internet, and want to start having healthier eating habits while helping the environment and be part of a sustainable food community in order to learn, share and exchange products with them. It does not matter if you are a small urban producer, a person who looks forward to start consuming local and organic products or if you just want to observe, learn and be part of this sustainable food community. GREENEST has a special place for you.

Currently, urban self-sustaining agriculture is practiced by 800 million people in the world (FAO, 2015). In the past 10 years, governments in 20 countries have sought FAO assistance to remove obstacles and provide incentives, inputs and training to "urban farmers". However, we believe that GREENEST´s crowdsourcing philosophy, will help us to help ourselves.

Our app gives them the opportunity to respond to climatic variations accurately, eliminate intermediaries that increase the prices and develop a crowdsourcing network to exchange products. Although we want to start with urban producers, we are planning to reach rural farmers after 1-year´s operation. 

A poor distribution of agricultural products in Yucatán causes unnecessary costs increase, more profit for intermediaries than producers, higher carbon emissions, crop losses and lack of sustainable food. Our app is a bridge between small rural and urban producers, their communities and its consumers.

GREENEST allows to take advantage of seasonal local products. For example, Yucatan is the 2nd producing state of aubergine, the 4th in cucumber and the 9th in pumpkin (SAGARPA, 2015).

Although there are competitors in Mexico, such as Agropalm, Dipasa and Fagro, none of these focus on B2C targets and there is no community crowdsourced approach.

Our proposal has the value of innovation to be focused on the role of consumers. We use interdisciplinary knowledge in marketing, logistics, IoT, AI, nutrition and research, UX and innovation to design a collaborative model that allows small agricultural producers to be contacted to exchange or sell their products and generate a culture of social change. Changing the way to feed ourselves, collaborating and creating social value to guarantee food, sustainability and improvement in the quality of life of small producers and its communities.

Although there are competitors in Mexico, such as Agropalm, Dipasa and Fagro, none of these focus on B2C targets and there is no community crowdsourced approach.

Our app applies IoT and AI in order to generate the necessary data to automatically apply business intelligence for the location of the available sustainable food, closest exchange points, potential clients, specialized training and a great user experience for all the user´s profiles.

Our digital platform will generate a database that includes proven farming methods. AI will be used to determine the best product distribution routes; this method has been extensively tested by platforms like Uber Technologies. AI will also be applied to determine the best times to sow and harvest. TellusLabs company has successfully used AI

According to FAO, applications of AI in agriculture are emerging in three major categories, (i) agricultural robotics, (ii) soil and crop monitoring, and (iii) predictive analytics. The Berlin-based agricultural tech startup PEAT developed the Plantix app that identifies potential defects and nutrient deficiencies in soil (http://www.fao.org/e-agriculture/news/can-artificial-intelligence-help-improve-agricultural-productivity)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89tULyOLLWU&feature=emb_title

NatureSweet, a company located in USA, is using AI to better control pests and diseases in its greenhouses.

The technology, developed by the Israeli digital farming company Prospera, has already improved harvests and reduced labor costs. Adrian Almeida, chief innovation officer at NatureSweet, believes artificial intelligence will eventually improve his greenhouses tomato yields by 20% (https://money.cnn.com/2017/07/26/technology/future/farming-ai-tomatoes/index.html)

Learning how to produce sustainable food itself raises awareness of the value and importance of this work, develops environmental care habits and incentives healthier eating habits. Theory of the common good (2010).

Present
We started this project a month ago and we are already validating our market for the first time:

• 5 urban small producers

• 10 consumers

We do not have the app yet, but we use a WhatsApp group where producers can offer their products in order to sell them to the consumers and exchange them with other producers.

Insight 1: 15 people have not had the necessity of going to the supermarket to buy any fruit or vegetable. We have created a self-sustainable food chain with only 15 people.
Insight 2: 5 out of 10 consumers have already started to cultivate at least 1 product. Hence we went from 5 to 10 urban small producers in only 1 month.

Year 1 (October 2020 – October 2021)
At least 400,000 people in Yucatán already use organic gardens as a complement to their daily food (Colegio de la Frontera Sur, 2014). Considering that we will develop our app during year 1, we are considering to have at least 100,000 users (combining producers and consumers).

Year 5 (2025)

Based on our first validation market, we have the hypothesis to duplicate our user at least every semester, considering our worst scenario. Achieving 50,000 users the first year will let us to have at least 500,000 users.

Year 1 (October 2020 – October 2021)
 Our goals in the first year, would be to launch our app ang get at least 50,000 users. With the success that we are going to achieve, we intend to have 40 companies interested in buying advertising spots or interest in sponsoring our product.
Raise awareness in society of the need to have products like ours, that help the environment and have food with more nutrients in order to achieve self consumption.

Year 5 (2025)
Have the validation of the market, with all the benefits of the self-consumption.
We want a partnership or sponsoring with the government, to introduce at least one of our products in each family, because the government must ensure and provide to the population fruits, vegetables and legumes, and the way that we propose is the best, with the self consumption.
Our users would be 400,000 and we are going to be present in 8 states (Mexico).
With all of our sponsoring, we are going to support at least 4 communities.
Introduce thermometers and other technology to improve the self cultivation.

First of all, we have to mention as a barrier that we are the number one state in México with obesity, that affects culturally because of the way people see the food they consume. They do not have the culture of farm their food and also have the believe that is a very difficult thing to do. One of our challenges is to create traction into the app, be able to attract people to use the freemium version in order to get as many users as possible. Having a unique UX will help us to overcome this first barrier. It has to be easy to manage in order to achieve our goal of creating an active community and exchange, buy or sell products. Financially the way the app is going to make money by publicity and also by selling the products could be a red flag, because we have to create a community that will be attractive for a brand that want to put publicity in it but also for the costumer to make them buy or be at least interested on the products they can find.

For the cultural barrier we are planning to work with Universidad Modelo as first step to involve the education approach in the process and create an orchard in the campus, in order to show that is a process that can be easily done and replicate.

We will validate our market in three different areas: Universidad Modelo Mérida, Yucatán; Universidad Modelo Valladolid, Yucatán; and Universidad Modelo Chetumal, Quintana Roo.

We are planning to work with designers and software engineer students to develop and validate the app´s functionalities, we can work together with students from Universidad Modelo.

NA

Part-time staff: 11 people

1. Ninsue: 7 years of experience advising SMEs in Digital Marketing. 17 years of teaching MKT, PR and Business Intelligence.
2. Ricardo: 35 years of experience working for multinational companies and Mexican companies in areas of technology, distribution and operations.
3. Regina: Fashion Designer with 5 years of experience developing products and creating technical information for production management.
4. Trinidad: Biochemical Food Engineer, MSc Biotechnology and Phd in Chemical and Biochemical Sciences. 15 years of experience in food quality and composition analysis.
5. Rubén: Electronic Engineer and a Phd in Robotics and Advanced Manufacturing 20 years of experience in electronic product design and mechatronics.
6. Sara: Fashion Designer with 3 years of experience in biomaterials, natural dyes, upcycling and sustainability processes applied to the production of new design objects.
7. Francisco: Mechatronic Engineer and entrepreneur with 6 years of experience in parametric design, digital manufacturing for prototypes, product design management and eSports.
8. Magaly: Master in Mkt and Commercial Management, 20 years of experience as a business project advisor for SMEs (innovation and labour psychology specialist).

9. Lester: Computer Systems Engineer with 4 years of experience working in IT companies as QA Analyst and as a professor.

10. Vane: Attorney at law with Master in Law, 10 years of experience in property rights and administrative law.
11. Liz: MSc in Entrepreneurship with 10 years of experience as a Business Developer, specialised in Marketing, Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Pictures of our real production:

Universidad Modelo
Our first and most important strategic ally is Universidad Modelo, a private University where all the team members are involved with. Some of us are members of the Innovation Centre and others are researchers at the Research Centre of this University. Universidad Modelo is willing to help us launch and validate our first prototype in their 3 locations: Mérida, Yucatán; Valladolid, Yucatán and Chetumal, Quintana Roo.  

Blockcahin Merida
Alfonso Govela, founder of this community, is willing to participate and being our partner helping us out with the develop of some of the technology required and sharing the experience and knowledge of his team members.

GREENNEST is a social company that seeks to promote social change in the way we see, grow and distribute healthy food. The revenue of selling products goes directly to the producers. Although we are a non-profitable organization we make our income from: 1) Consulting, training and advice in value chains and marketing networks 2) Environmental services for innovation of products associated with irrigation, cultivation, and fertilization 3) Distribution of organic and ecological products. The beneficiary segment is the small agricultural producers in the city of Mérida and urban consumers whose lifestyle is active, look for organic, healthy products at fair prices and who are interested in learning how to grow their own food. Greennest provides its services through a mobile geolocation application, which allows to locate small producers and make a link between them and consumers with the possibility of applying a freemium model for users, offering nutritional and environmental courses and online workshops. This app will be supported by advertisers and premium fees to obtain special services with preferential prices. Our project has its essence in the collaborative economy and crowdsourcing.

We are applying to MIT Solve considering not only to obtain funds but to partner with MIT, gaining knowledge from this institution and all its participants. We are also opened to share and receive knowledge, feedback and technical resources from the participants and allies’ institutions. Our solution is a worldwide one, hence we are looking forward to get mentoring from all around the world, be able to connect with stakeholders (potential clients, suppliers, allies, investors, partners, etc.)

Learning and be able to get technology from different countries is always easier when you have partners there. Having the opportunity of a global traction and exposure, increase our chances to success. As our philosophy stands: 3T = Together, Today, Trascending.

If we have learnt so much from a 3-hours workshop, we are sure our opportunities working together are endless.

We would love to be partnering with MIT, it would be a dream come true for all our team members. The technology, vision and people you have will give us the opportunity to learn and apply new ways of thinking.

MIT Solve as a social and innovative initiative will be a great partner to help us understand better our revenue model without forgetting our social and global approach. Sharon Bolt will be and amazing mentor for us.

In Mexico, according to statistical data referred by ENOE in 2017, 35.2 million of women have been mothers, that´s really important to know, because these women are the household support.

In our country, for 8 hours working, you receive approximately $8 USD, amount that is very limited to cover the expenses of the family. That is why, in case of winning this prize, we would have a special section for working moms in order to give a 50% off in the purchase and subscription in our app and the product that we sell, in order to increase the self- cultivation, so the family can have a healthier life and also with the harvest, the section of food expenses can be reduced.

AI have many applications that can be use to improve GREENEST services. For example, analysing satellite images to determine the best times for planting and harvestin; the right amounts of water, space and many other factors required for different fruits and vegetables based on the feedback provided by users and other sources of evidence. We can also use AI to improve distribution routes for sustainable food making easier for people to trade them.