/root_farms

/root_farms are affordable hydroponic greenhouses with AI/IoT to create farm jobs anywhere with water sustainability and huge ++$/acre 

We are helping job creation in low skill manual labor jobs directed by AI to make sure affordable hydroponic  /root_farms systems allow anyone to start growing with great water savings (50%-90%) and great yield benefits (more than 10X / acre) compared to soil agriculture. 

We have started developing our solution with partners in India, China, and USA to make sure our products can create new farm jobs near cities and / or improve rural farms productivity.

Our goal is to help low-income communities flourish with new job prospects in urban farming. We are working on making sure our farms are all networked to a central cloud for improvement of all /root_farms performance over time with additional data in addition to new optimization algorithms created from /root_farms data experiments.

/root_farms can change the world by creating a packaged greenhouse job solution that is extremely economical, profitable, and environmentally sustainable that scales around cities and in 3rd world countries.

Our solution is a proprietary low-cost sensor platform packaged with market-ready complete hydrogreenhouse with plant care AI based on computer vision and environmental sensing. We have several subsystems assembled, tested and we are beginning to develop our complete solution with funds invested by angel funds.

We are going to be collecting the most amount of data for the lowest amount of price. We will be using information about the farmers' growth and success to help them get access to financing with banks, and post-harvest solutions on the web and smart contracts on the blockchain. 

Our partner CropKing has been supplying greenhouses for generations and our advisers Howard Resh, and Heiner Lieth have been constructing greenhouses/testing production soilless culture agriculture technology for most of their lives, we will make the lowest cost package for the climate needs of different nations. 

Our products have a great social impact on people and the environment. We enable job creation and helping existing farmers become much more productive. Our farms are profitable to pay themselves back in a 2-4 years depending on crop markets. They have massive water savings due to our hydroponics. We will be aiming for affordability but hydroponics can be 99% efficient with water compared to soil, our partners have achieved such results. Lastly, the chemical fertilizer and pesticide usage and runoff are much lower than soil agriculture. 

We see our farming solution as a great way for existing farmers to upgrade and new job creation to be created in farming closer to cities, making the food supply chain more efficient and sustainable.

The innovative nature of the technology is hydroponic greenhouse sensor network hardware and the AI control system based on data sets we create for different crops. The proprietary nature of cost-advantages and financing ability is that our partner suppliers have been selling these hydroponic greenhouses at margin for decades and other technology low tech controls manufacturers have had low volume and massive costs. Due to our partner relationships, our service will be the lowest cost complete greenhouse available and have the most technology to help any grower of any level get started.

Our product is a complete greenhouse with AI personal assistance built in to allow anyone to start growing effectively and have great economic results and more sustainable impact on the environment. The underlying technology novelty is our low-cost sensor network platform that collects environmental data internal/external to the greenhouse and collects plant computer vision data. We then have crop optimization algorithms developed from our high fidelity sensor network. These algorithms will enable yield prediction, stress detection, and recommend and advise farmers on what they need to do to maximize their farm's success.

In the next 12 months /root_farm sensor networks will be prototyped, calibrated, tested, production prototyped and prepared for data collection for our PlantCare AI at our labs and partners at CropKing, and UC Davis. 

/root_farm hydroponic greenhouse economics will be validated with our partners, this will give our solution ethos in the hydroponic greenhouse world as well as proof to underwrite financing for complete /root_farms.

Lastly, we will begin data collection experiments across crops, environmental stress, insect, pest and disease conditions. Our PlantCare AI will be developed on our proprietary data. 

/root_farms will affect 5-10 lives in our development phases, 100s in our pilot phase and 1000s in our direct marketing campaigns. 

Figure below describes the 3 year conservative development timeline for our solution in India. 

Our strategy implores exploration in multiple markets with public capital and private capital sources. 

Initially, we will help larger farmers 100-10,000 acres that can outright purchase our solutions without financing. As we prove milestones for regional economical / agricultural development offices, banks, and blockchain based financing our goal is to 1-100 acres and job seekers to make a commitment in their future with /root_farms. 

Direct marketing to farmers and farming investors in our network as well as advertising with fertilizer companies and state farming agencies. We will be using email marketing and phone calls to invite farmers in our network to see our technology. We will target larger farms as our beachhead market because of investors that can support loans or direct payment to adopt new technology. We will have revenue from this as soon as we have demonstrated our pilot. Also we will apply for our products to be packaged with Govt loans for larger roll-outs with smaller size farmers.

The population we serve is hydroponic greenhouse farmers, current soil farmers looking to convert and new-build job seekers for hydroponic greenhouse jobs near cities and where farming was previously not possible. 

Our partners have developed hydroponic controls technology products, AI/IoT products for orchard farms, sold thousands of hydroponic greenhouses across the world, and our advisers have constructed various soilless culture greenhouses and outdoor operations across the world.

We do not have any /root_farms deployed in the world but are working on it with angel funds. 

In 12 months we plan on serving up to 5 people with sensing solutions. We will be working together with them to improve their current hydroponic greenhouse production operation. Thereafter, we will create datasets for our PlantCare AI product. Within 3 years we will be deploying our AI/IoT system with affordable complete hydroponic greenhouses to 100s of large farmers that can afford new solutions outright. We expect exponential growth thereafter with new financing vehicles that allow us to get /root_farms into the hands of job seekers of any skill level, any background, and any socioeconomic status. 

The US team has proven strength in delivering hydroponic greenhouse solutions, developing controls, sensing, and AI products for yield/resource optimization.

The US team has proven strength in testing accuracy, precision and reliability of hydroponic production technologies.

The US team has proven strength in marketing agricultural technology and hydroponic production operations.

The India team has proven strength in creating new businesses in several sectors.

The India team has proven strength in creating new technologies for a host of reputable technology companies.

The India team has proven strength in agricultural operations with 100s of acres of agricultural land of various types.

Our revenue model is to collect a smaller amount of revenue on hardware sales than any other complete greenhouse package provider and make most of our company’s value on long-term subscription / transaction services. We will be able to acquire customers for roughly the cost of complete greenhouse equipment and AI controls hardware/ software.

We aim to grow crops that allow the farms we create to support $50K gross annual income jobs and $2.50-5K annual maintenance costs.

Our pilots will demonstrate economic sustainability and operation in the markets where we plan to seek out investor owned farms in our network and retrofit, additionally we will be able to use data from our pilots to seek government subsidies for farmers and bank partnerships.

Serving USA, India, China, Africa and Gulf Coast Countries we target at least 100M growers, this long-term sustainable revenue target is $500,000,000,000

Greenhouses will be deployed with secured crop off-take agreements, farmers, site analysis, construction specialists, and AI personal assistants tailored for each farm’s needs.

We are also planning on integrating cryptocurrency asset-backed derivatives contracts allowing more private investor capital to directly finance and grow jobs in the emerging markets we serve. 

We are applying to solve to join the class of the next generation of innovators out of MIT. Our team has worked with Stanford, Berkeley, USC, CalTech, Texas A&M, UNC, UC Davis, and more but have yet to top the top technical talent of the Eastern USA. In addition to working with MIT faculty and students, we believe Solve may connect us to corporate partners and mentors we need to find success on our long journey. 

Some key barriers: technical validation, economic validation, commercial financing, UI design for adaptability / accessibility, design for manufacturing. We believe that connections with companies like Autodesk and in-house resources like MIT Media Lab may help us find specialists that can greatly improve the results of our work and result in profitable collaboration. MIT Solve can connect us to resources at MIT, partners of MIT, and help us accomplish our engineering / business objectives.