EcoPlant

Introduction - With this project I expect to help small farmers managing their crops, controlling  harvest and even teaching amateur farmers and people who intend to start a farm how to do it without harming the enviroment. 

Proposal - I am proposing two things, an app and a system controlled with arduino, the app would have courses and tutorials for amateurs on agricultural activities and would also have data about the crops and harvests made by the farmer. The second part, the arduino system, would contain a wind turbine (An acessible one) to power arduino and power as well a water pump. 

The changes - If my idea was scaled globally it would help small farmers to improve their business, would help the enviroment, because it is eco friendly, and would help us, consumers, as well, because we wouldn`t eat food full of pesticides. 

The problem - The problem i`m trying to solve is the elitist and polluting agricultural system used in large companies that control this market, I took as example Brazil, where the small farmers aren`t educated on how to plant and run their farms and businesses, forcing them to sell their land to large companies in order to survive. I`m also aiming, not mainly, at the carbon emission and in my method I give the person who is planting some options to decrease the greenhouse gases emissions. Indirectly I am also improving the quality of the food, because if the number of small producers increase, the pesticides use on our food will decrease. 

The Solution - My solution is divided in two parts, the mobile app, and the arduino crop control. The app will have courses, tutorials, videos, etc. to teach the small producer how to plant avoiding enviromental damage, and boosting the production, as well as a dashboard with data about his production. The second part is an arduino structure as it shows below, which will control the watering of the crops and monitor the crop's state, as well as mesuring some important enviroment variables such as humidity and temperature. Everytime the crops are harvested the data will be sent to the database attached to the farmers user, so that he can observe his yield to change or maintain the current technique he is using. Basically it helps the farmer to manage his business and educate him. 

The Tecnologies - The solution will use as technology web programming (Java, react native, objective-C, swift, C#), and could probably use Java studio or Xamarin for developing the app. It will use as well a database (Postgres, Mysql), possibly a server for webpages (Hosting Apache and PHP/React), arduino kit (Including arduino, protoboard, jumpers, sensors, etc), and a dynamo (Used to craft the wind turbine).

The Population - My solution serve mainly the small farmers and producers, by givind them resources to develop their lands and give people godd, pesticide free food. To understand better their problems I had geography classes about it, studied and serched on the internet for data about it. Unfortunately I couldn't speak with a small producer about it, but I did some research and hope to help them with my solution. The solution will give them information and techniques so that they can develop their business the best way, here in Brazil for example some small farmers burn the soil to make it more fertile, but they don't know that they are harming it by diong so. With my app, besides the control over irrigation and crop harvest, the farmer can learn many different eco friendly techniques to plant and grown.  

My solution is unique because it makes the new technologies serve the small farmers not the big ones, mechanizing the agricultural activities, without making the employees lose their jobs. 

It uses already existing technology, the mobile application, a manufactured wind turbine, a water pump and arduino to control the whole system. The Arduino's job will be to monitor the crops state, the humidity, the wind and the temperature, watering the crops depending on those factors. When the crops are ready to be harvested arduino will send a notification to the farmer through the app. The data about the harvest (Type of crop, was it healthy, etc) will be stored on the database to be posteriorly formatted and shown to the farmer. The app will also have warnings about eco friendly agriculture looking for the decrease of the greenhouse gas emissions, along with courses for new farmers looking for education.

This technology is widely used and works pretty well, I can prove that because I did a scientific work (Production plant using arduino) and presented it on a congress. Other evidences of its efficiency are listed below:

• https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED595950
• https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6784685
• https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anand_Nayyar/publication/313804002_Smart_farming_IoT_based_smart_sensors_agriculture_stick_for_live_temperature_and_moisture_monitoring_using_Arduino_cloud_computing_solar_technology/links/59d9f67c0f7e9b12b36d66f8/Smart-farming-IoT-based-smart-sensors-agriculture-stick-for-live-temperature-and-moisture-monitoring-using-Arduino-cloud-computing-solar-technology.pdf
• http://hortherbpublisher.com/index.php/ijh/article/view/3452

I expect that with my solution the problem of the lack of support for small farmers will be overcome, as well as improving the consumers healthy, by giving them organic products free of pesticides, and decrease the carbon emission by educating the farmers.

Currently my solution serves no one, but if I win Solve's prize I expect to to apply that idea on communities here in Brazil, if everything goes well I expect to grow the idea and start a startup to provide more resources to small producers and to preserve the nature. If thinking about numbers I expect to serve 33 farmers within the next year, if the startup grow enough the goal is to help all the farmers in Brazil (about 4 million).

Currently the organization is not stablished, I'm just one person, and I don't have enough money for my idea, in order to make my idea true I would need to find more members and would need money to start the business.

I hope to raise that money with Solve's prize funding, but if I don't achieve it I could do campaings and look for volunteers, sponsors and colaborators, or even look for government funding. 

It's just me.

I am a technician and love to program, I have researched for two years about a project using arduino for production engineering and learned precious skills. I know arduino programming language, I know Java, PHP, C#, SQL, C/C++, html, CSS, Javascript, etc. And I know as well how to use Chart.js, Postgresql database, how to host websites, how to develop applications, how to program arduino, how to build projetcs with arduino and I am willing to work hard