FarmerNet

By 2050, the world population will be 9.1 billion. According to the UN, farmers must increase food production by 70 percent compared to 2007 levels to meet the needs of the larger population. Climate change will reduce farm productivity by 17%. Climate change contributes to long-term environmental problems, such as groundwater depletion (70% of all fresh water) and soil degradation, which greatly affects food and agriculture production systems. With deforestation from agriculture leads to desertification, soil erosion, and fewer crops. Heat and water scarcity will have a direct impact on animal health and will also reduce the quality and supply of crops. Farmers are pressured to grow more with less water, fertilizers, and manual labour. Farmers who are the backbone of our society often live on the edge of poverty. Carbon emission information is siloed, non-verified and non-standardized. 

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time and requires dramatic action from companies and governments on both mitigation and adaptation. Already, we have seen an increase in the frequency and intensity of fires, droughts, floods, storms, and other extreme events, and global food systems and ecosystems have come under threat. Compounding this problem, the most severe impacts of climate change are likely to be felt by the world’s most disadvantaged populations. Simultaneously, a zero-carbon world will require both new technologies and equitable approaches to deployment. As a result, it is critical that society take strong action within the next few decades to both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the consequences of a changing climate with technology like computer vision precision agriculture. Challenge Overview The climate crisis requires dramatic action from companies and governments on both mitigation and adaptation. Simultaneously, a zero-carbon world will require both new technologies and equitable approaches to deployment. In response, MIT Solve will focus our ongoing Sustainability Challenges around innovation needs to enable equitable climate action at scale. For 2022, we are focusing on the following two areas: Protecting Ecosystem Carbon Natural ecosystems absorb and store huge amounts of carbon and provide many other benefits for both the biosphere and human communities. Stabilizing current carbon-rich ecosystems, such as peatlands or mangrove forests, and driving long-term absorption and storage of natural carbon is critical to mitigating the climate crisis. The world emits 36 gigaton of fossil fuels in 2019 36,000,000,000 tons. This is nearly 3x higher than 50 years ago. Some of the world’s largest economies have made commitments of net-zero carbon pledges. Social economic impacts of climate impact includes fires, flooding, droughts, heat waves, and severe storms, the cost of adapting costal areas to rising sea levels, loss of the capacity to work due to heat, more wars to gain access to limited resources, fresh water will be in short supply in some areas, relocation of whole towns, decreasing productivity of harvests, and diseases will spread due to higher temperatures. Yet it disproportionally affects places like Africa and South Asia. Those who contribute the least GHG – being the most impacted with 65% of people in poverty depending on agriculture for income. 

Innovations continue to occur in the area of carbon capture and storage. In 2019, researchers developed a process to reduce CO2 to solid carbon at room temperature, a result that has previously only been possible at high temperatures. The solid state is suitable for indefinite storage as it reduces the risk of accidental leaks into the environment. According to the researchers, this process is expected to be scalable for use in industry. Direct air capture is similar to carbon capture and storage. Rather than separating CO2 in the process of generating power, Direct Air Capture’s only purpose is to remove CO2 from the atmosphere using absorbent chemicals. 

The problem we chose is the intensification of climate change effects on small-scale farmers in the developing world. We know from research that climate change threatens food security through its direct effects on crop production, as well as changes in markets and food prices. The risk to the livelihood and food security of many more smallholder farmers is set to increase. FarmerNet is a safety net to empower farmers in developing countries. It measures crops and livestock producers that optimizes the agriculture supply chain by improving yields, efficiency, and profitability. The end goal is to lift people out of poverty. Our current food system is fragile and unsustainable failing farmers, and people everywhere. As developers, we need to step in and provide farmers with a climate-resilient solution. Achieving this environmental goal means increasing the availability of nutritious food, making food more affordable and reducing inequities in access to food where natural ecosystems absorb and store huge amounts of carbon and provide many other benefits for both the biosphere and human communities. If we cannot quickly rid ourselves of dependence on fossil fuels, removing carbon from the atmosphere becomes a logical and critical innovative challenge. 

The goal is to reduce environmental impacts and carbon footprint, and increase progress towards global and corporate carbon emission goals solving sustainability challenges:

• Leverage digital technology artificial intelligence innovations with the potential applied in agriculture
• Show potential to improve farmer incomes, productivity, and climate change resilience
• Address barriers to scaled adoption of digital artificial intelligence services, such as access, affordability and language and digital literacy
• Have the potential to be bundled with multiple farmer-facing services into an integrated solution enabled by robust digital and data technology platforms and services
• Provide fit-for-purpose solutions using human-centered design for farming enterprises
• Show potential to be scaled using a sustainable business model, affordable, and able to provide positive return on investment at a smallholder farm level through successful pilots, scaling partners, or higher volume production driving down prices

Carbon emission information is siloed, non-verified and non-standardized. The goal is to reduce environmental impacts and carbon footprint and increase progress towards global and corporate carbon emission goals. Fortune Global firms spend around $20 billion a year on CSR activities, more than 90% of the 250 largest companies in the world now producing an annual CSR report with North America has the highest regional sustainability reporting rate. Third-party assurance of sustainability information in corporate reporting is now a majority business practice worldwide with GRI remains the dominant global standard for sustainability reporting.

If no action is taken to combat climate change, the considerable physical damages would imply a lower path of economic growth. In terms of which investment asset class markets will be more at risk. FarmerNet believes tech and health care are likely to benefit the most from the green transition, whereas energy and utilities may lag. At the broad asset class level, the appeal of developed market equities brightens at the expense of high yield credit and emerging debt due to the higher concentration of carbon intensive sectors that comprise the benchmark indices for the latter. A green transition to a low-carbon economy, consistent with the Paris Agreement goals, will deliver an improved outlook for growth and risk assets relative to doing nothing. Such an outlook rejects the commonly held notion that tackling climate change has to come at a net cost to society.

Current problems/mistakes with cleantech solutions:

• Carbon capture initiatives will lower the incentive to reduce fossil fuels, and slow our transition to alternative fuels.
• Carbon capture is inherently too expensive to be practical.
• There are few opportunities to innovate since the science of carbon capture is so straightforward.
• There is no business model to sustain carbon capture as a viable for-profit business.
• Carbon storage may be dangerous/hazardous to the environment 

Climate change – Turning Investment Risk into Opportunity

The primary users of the FarmerNet’s marketplace are those who benefit from quality data. The application is designed for industrial-scale use in order to create a global supply chain of data for AI consumption. The main actors are data providers, data consumers, data marketplaces, service providers and network keepers. Increasing demand for cryptocurrencies and accelerating adoption of blockchain-based solutions have highlighted an important issue: the technology's growing energy consumption and its impact on our climate.

1. Consumers

Socially and environmentally responsible companies create positive brand recognition, increase customer loyalty, and attract employees. According to millennial consumer trends, 90% of millennials would switch brands to one associated with a good case. They are prepared to make personal sacrifices to make an impact on issues they care about. Changing consumer trends means that millennials are willing to pay more for a product, sharing products rather than buying, or taking a pay cut to work for a responsible company. These elements among the keys to achieving increased profitability and long-term financial success.  By making blockchain technology more environmentally responsible, the industry has an opportunity to grow its user base. 

2. Corporate

From Fortune 250 largest companies, the underlying trend for third-party assurance of sustainability data is 71 percent (KPMG Survey of Sustainability Reporting 2020). They are listed on regulated markets requires carbon accounting and audits (assurance) of reported information which introduces more detailed reporting requirements, and a requirement to report according to mandatory government sustainability reporting standards. Companies like PwC have set aside $1 billion further automate parts of its environmental auditing process planning to hire 100,000 employees over 5 years focused on ESGs. Our conviction is that businesses perform better when they are deliberate about their role in society and act in the interests of their employees, customers, shareholders, and communities. As ESG grows we believe our software service and support business will add to the enterprise value as well as help drive adoption of Chia globally. We believe that large institutions, corporations and other entities will be able to reap the efficiencies and benefits of using a digital blockchain currency like Chia.

3. Investors

There is an increasing demand in MRV (Measurement, Reporting, and Verification) tools by people, businesses, and government to meet their ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) and SDG (Sustainability Development Goals). Research from investment fund Morningstar states ESG funds captured $51.1 billion of net new money from investors in 2020, a record and more than double the prior year. The number of sustainable funds available to U.S. investors grew to almost 400 last year with a 30% increase from 2019 and 4x increase over the past decade meeting Paris Agreement and SDG13 (Climate Action) goals for 2050.

We believe in empowering individuals and communities to create a Distributed Carbon Market Exchange that is low-cost, environmentally friendly, and owned by the people of the world. The financial future will be green money that will create a better world for future generations.

Protecting Ecosystem Carbon by providing rewards for land-based carbon sequestration addressing climate crisis with regenerative agriculture to reverse soil degradation by preventing erosion, absorbing moisture, feeding biodiverse microbes, and increasing soil carbon levels. Blockchain marketplace for farmers to earn revenue when land-based carbon reductions get traded as carbon emission credits. Buyers can claim proof and immutability with non fungible tokens for claims of carbon reductions, sustainability, and renewable energy.Non fungible tokens: Dynamic and changes based on real world data metrics land-based carbon emission NFT on the Rinkeby Chain. Carbon monitoring is a key tool for tracking progress, but current approaches are either hard to verify or expensive to scale–particularly underwater or in soils. 

FarmerNet is an agricultural technology organization on a mission to empower farmers to sustainably feed the next billion people:

1.     Provide a safety net for small-scale farmers to be more autonomous.

2.     Scale incentives for higher resiliency against climate change.

3.     Improve agricultural supply chains to reduce food loss and make producer-market connections.

High Level Solution: 

Reduces the average soil carbon verification cost from $400k/project to less than $400 with 18% greater profitability for farmers 

• Changing the ways of old by disrupting the entire framework of how we manage our carbon emission information for sustainability challenges
• Enables stakeholders to track, trace, match and manage their clean energy footprint while simplifying data-driven attestation of sustainability goals and mandates.
• Proof and immutability for the real world impact of carbon emission generation and consumption - allows companies to stand behind their claims of carbon reductions, sustainability, and renewable energy to prevent greenwashing using the immutable ledger to track environmental assets and liabilities.
• Farmernet’s smart contract’s logic and data trigger are viewable on the blockchain by all stakeholders, leading to transparency and independent verification of all outcomes.
• Tamperproof execution and data delivery to carbon emission, resulting in producers and consumers being able to trust that they will get the land based on accurate data metrics.
• Leverage digital technology artificial intelligence innovations with the potential applied in agriculture
• Show potential to improve farmer incomes, productivity, and climate change resilience
• Address barriers to scaled adoption of digital artificial intelligence services, such as access, affordability and language and digital literacy
• Have the potential to be bundled with multiple farmer-facing services into an integrated solution enabled by robust digital and data technology platforms and services
•  Equitable climate action at scale providing fit-for-purpose solutions using human-centered design for farming enterprises
• Show potential to be scaled using a sustainable business model, affordable, and able to provide positive return on investment at a smallholder farm level through successful pilots, scaling partners, or higher volume production driving down prices

Low Level Solution

In the digital world, climate accounting involves all processes of recording climate-relevant information/data; from the physical state of the planet to the list of all climate actors, their broad set of climate actions and agreements in respect to the shared account of the climate challenge. Interoperability is important for climate action as stakeholders are implementing a policy, providing an incentive or providing information.

Standards can help making difficult comparisons using shared protocols and MRV tools for a truly globally integrated climate accounting system. We must work together to create a trustworthy decentralized climate accounting system. Digital technology tools that seamlessly integrate all elements in a transparent and participatory climate accounting system cannot be developed in a silo.

·      Can we trust the data that the company has provided?  Claims that a report has been prepared in accordance with the GRI Standards with principles for defining report quality addressing accuracy, comparability, and reliability?

·      Can we trust judgement calls, made by either the company or a certifying entity, about which activities are not relevant and thus do not require data and auditing? How to document emissions factors used in an immutable ledger?

·      How do we know if the company is in fact working on its emissions reduction plan? Giving the auditors a digital identity by publish a hash value or certain metadata on public blockchain?

·      Can consumers and investors trust that the certifying entity is objective and standardized with a pricing distribution? How do consumers know that a "green product" is really better for the climate and that the offset buyers know that the offsets work? How do investors know that portfolio companies are achieving their climate goals? How do lenders know that green bonds and transition bonds are driving positive climate action? 

·      Can we trust the climate pledges made regularly by companies large and small? Are our cities really achieving their emissions targets? How secure is the data without cryptographic signing of any document provided or storing hash values of documents to blockchains?

Technology: Blockchain Carbon Credits

Distributed ledger technology solutions have the potential to provide trusted record-keeping processes, data consensus and rules automation crucially needed components in order to align actors, accelerate mitigation and adaptation action, and mobilize the trillions of dollars of climate finance required annually. Blockchain technologies are by design made for solving climate challenge issues:

Buyers question the validity of the offsets as consumers are concerned about greenwashing FarmerNet builds trust with scalable technology: Higher quality of data due to standardized non-financial reporting processes and internal controlling systems. More transparency: In response to established reporting standards, and future rules and regulations. Addressing risk of double counting carbon credits, where the same project is listed on different registries and the offsets are sold several times.  The ledger audits a certain amount of block confirmations to prove color coins were sent validly and not double counted where the carbon credits were received. Costly, time-consuming, paper-based processes could be streamlined. Save money CSR costs money to implement. Costs fall disproportionally on small businesses and lower risks in simplifing the reporting with FarmerNet’s MRV tool. Better access to finance when environmental, social, and governance considerations are incorporated into external reporting.

Create trust in CO2 emissions accounts as they are transacted across industrial and national boundaries, where no trusted central repository exists by maintaining a audit trail of immutable records, so that emissions calculations could be verified later without relying on one central repository. Audits could be simplified by granting access to standard-monitoring and regulation-enforcing entities. Compliance with voluntary standards could also be made more visible, accessible, and transparent for monitoring companies and those handing out certifications and consumers. Lack of transparency in pricing standards - Increase the interoperability/integration of CSR reports of different companies where we have A lot of different registries makes it difficult for buyers to track and a very heterogeneous market with different project types (forestry, renewables, etc.) and different regions. Different offsets trade vastly differently, from under $1 to nearly $50 per ton, even though they’re all denominated in tons of CO2 emissions. One $FNET token will be exchangeable for one Carbon Removal Certificate (CRC). With FarmerNet, suppliers can sell their certificates into the marketplace and get paid in tokens as soon as a buyer purchases their credits on a first-in, first-out (FIFO) basis.

1.     Carbon credit is listed for sale in the FarmerNet market queue in a first-in, first-out basis where once at the front of the queue, the next buyer purchases the carbon credit by sending  $FNET tokens to the smart contract acting as market operator for the CRC.

2.     Owner immediately changes to the sending address tokens causing the smart contract record status to become retired and no longer allows a change of ownership which is recorded on the immutable ledger.

• ERC721 tokens
• Metadata provides descriptive information for a tokenId that is stored off-chain
  • This will create a land NFT with 4 attributes:
  • uint256 longitude coordinate;
  • uint256 latitude coordinate;
  • uint256 carbon sequestered per land;
  • string name of land NFT;
• Each tokenId has a specific tokenURI that defines this API call, which returns a JSON object that looks something like this
• Assign tokenIds to their tokenURI, NFT marketplaces will be able to display your token -Image is using a URL that points to IPFS InterPlanetary File System -Every time the image is updated, the on-chain hash/tokenURI also has to change, meaning that we can have a record of the history of the metadata
• OpenSea NFT marketplace

Carbon Credit Standard Marketplace

Carbon credit standards reduce data silos and can be used for personal climate footprinting, product/service footprinting, entity accounting, regional accounting, and policy impact assessments. Climate change is a global problem and we are all planetary stakeholders who need to define shared protocols, standards, and platform tools for a globally integrated climate accounting system to be operationalized. Standards help people to understand each other. Standards also help people to made decisions with confidence and cooperate towards joint goals. Climate change necessitates urgent action at a global scale allowing greater interoperability between these standards.

What is standardised in climate mitigation standards? First, there are technical standards like those of the W3C. How are carbon credit emissions calculated? We have Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) which is the standard analytical method for calculating the carbon emissions of a product through its carbon lifecycle supply chain. There is also Product Category Rules (PCR) with rules define how life cycle analysis should be performed based on the type of product and can be linked to other MRV tools like LCA, PCR, and EPD. We can call these calculation methodologies or data processing standards. Application of such standards produce indicators, metrics and indices with a well-defined meaning where such outputs can be tokenised. Second, there are accounting standards, including: Greenhouse Gas Protocol the standards used for compliance in different carbon sequestration jurisdictions, voluntary standards like the Verra's Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), the Gold Standard, American Carbon Registry (ACR), or Climate Action Reserve (CAR). Lastly, we have environmental performance standards like those of the IFC to accelerate Paris Accord climate goals and certifications based on accounting standards, such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Accelerates the need for standardisation in the context of global climate action and reduced climate data silos. Application of these standards yield standards compliant reports. The contents of such report can also be tokenised in a Carbon Credit and Offset Ecosystem

1. Developers invests in projects, such as renewable energy or forestry management
2. Claims about the emissions reduction of the project is calculated under a methodology published by a verification body.  These methodologies are based on the CDM methodologies.
3. The project is registered with a verification and validation body
4. A Validation and Verification Bureau (VVB) validates the project. See for example Gold Standard’s approve auditors list
5. VVB reviews the data and independently verifies aspects of the project, to certify the amount of emissions reduced.
6. The verified emissions reductions are sold as carbon offsets, through brokers or directly to buyers. Major corporations such as Microsoft, Stripe, or CORSIA - eligibility criteria for airlines to purchase credits, ICROA, or IETA
7. Pricing References for standardization with CME Global Emissions Offsets, futures  EcoSecurities Price Index , Gold Standard Marketplace or Forest Trends EcoSystem Marketplace 

No Farms. No Food. No Future. In developing countries, 65% of working adults depend on agriculture for their income. FarmerNet can help end poverty, raise incomes, and improve food security building a better world for everyone.

The problem we chose is the intensification of climate change effects on small-scale farmers in the developing world. We know from research that climate change threatens food security through its direct effects on crop production, as well as changes in markets and food prices. The risk to the livelihood and food security of many more smallholder farmers is set to increase. FarmerNet is a safety net to empower farmers in developing countries. It measures crops and livestock producers that optimizes the agriculture supply chain by improving yields, efficiency, and profitability. The end goal is to lift people out of poverty.

Farmers are pressured to grow more with less water, fertilizers, and manual labour. Farmers who are the backbone of our society often live on the edge of poverty. Social implications includes a higher suicide rate among farmers which is 3.5 times higher than the general population. Our current food system is fragile and unsustainable failing farmers, and people everywhere. As developers, we need to step in and provide farmers with a climate-resilient solution. Achieving this environmental goal means increasing the availability of nutritious food, making food more affordable and reducing inequities in access to food. Farmers who are the backbone of our society often live on the edge of poverty. The average U.S. poultry grower takes out nearly $700,000 in loans, using their home and land as collateral for insurance, yet average net income is around $13,140. Social implications includes a higher suicide rate among US farmers which is 3.5 times higher than the general population. For both stabilization and measurement, enabling many separate communities to participate on their terms is critical. Our current food system is fragile and unsustainable failing farmers, and people everywhere. As developers, we need to step in and provide farmers with a climate-resilient solution. Achieving this environmental goal means increasing the availability of nutritious food, making food more affordable and reducing inequities in access to food. 

Size of our target customer sub-segment: 1. Age,onlinedigitalservices,andnetworking 2. Whatdifficultiesfarmersfindintheirwork

Market Size

Entrepreneurs have a tendency to pick the largest market segment. However, FarmerNet wants to pick a market that is large enough to generate some cash, and small enough so FarmerNet can achieve a meaningful market share. The market segment FarmerNet are aiming for shouldn’t be smaller than 20M and shouldn’t be bigger than 200M. Our market share should not be less than 20%.

570 million small-scale farms

• 90% of farmers

• 75% of the world’s agricultural land

• Only 56% of value production

  TAM/SAM/SOM

  Total Available Market (TAM): $1,500M, 125,000 Farms, Regional Market

  Serviceable Available Market (SAM): $450M, 37,500 Farms, Crops and Livestock

  Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) : ($20M) $50M, 4160 Farms, Commercial Cash Crops Beachhead Market

  Beachhead Market

  TGDIYCMN: Total Global Domination In Our Chosen Market Niche

  A market segment is defined by four aspects: a. customers buying similar products; b. with similar sales cycles; c. with similar expectations of providing value in similar ways d. there is word of mouth between customers in the market

  These four elements guarantee a scalable sales process for our small start-up team. Customers communicate with each other. They read  trade journals, meet at conferences, communicate via LinkedIn

  groups, and have the occasional coffee with one another. Customers can serve as compelling and high-value references for each other in that market building a “net” for FarmerNet. 

5 Main Market Segmentation

An overview of possible addressable markets grouped into market segments. (potential buyers and not potential applications of our product ) 

1. RegenerativeFarms 

2. Geography74%China/India 

3. DairyFarms$ 

4. YoungFarmersEarlyAdopters 

5. Fortune500companies 

Customer Archetype: Customer Archetype is a detailed description of one of your interviewees, or it may be a composite of several people you have interviewed. In our example, we are using a 25 year white male small size farm farmer who’s father passed his farm down to him and who depends on farming for his income. He is not alone as worldwide, there are over 570 million farms. 90% are run by an individual or a family and rely primarily on family labour. He knows that climate change will reduce farm productivity by 17%. Climate change contributes to long-term environmental problems, such as groundwater depletion and soil degradation, which greatly affects food and agriculture production systems. Currently, agriculture accounts for 70 percent of all freshwater withdrawals globally and an even higher share of “consumptive water use” due to the evapotranspiration of crops. With deforestation from agriculture leads to desertification, soil erosion, and fewer crops. Heat and water scarcity will have a direct impact on animal health and will also reduce the quality and supply of crops. He is worried about environmental concerns on affecting his farm yields, profitability, and efficiency. He is pressured to grow more with less water, fertilizers, and manual labour. As a farmer, he is the backbone of our society but he is struggling financially and living on the edge of poverty. As a U.S. poultry grower takes out nearly $700,000 in loans, he has taken out a loan on his home and land as collateral for insurance, yet his average net income is around $13,140. He has mental health issues like depression and anxiety and is evident by the higher suicide rate among US farmers which is 3.5 times higher than the general population. Our current food system is fragile and unsustainable failing farmers, and people everywhere. As developers, we need to step in and provide farmers with a climate-resilient solution. Achieving this environmental goal means increasing the availability of nutritious food, making food more affordable and reducing inequities in access to food.

In Beachhead Market FarmerNet can demonstrate that we can deliver, while building a name for we which is currently a nobody in the agtech space. It should give us the opportunity to prove ourselves as a tech company by dominating that market. Because our customers are connected in some form, FarmerNet can build the reputation and credibility we need to enter other market segments. That’s why we want FarmerNet to aim for a market share of at least 20%. In a market of 20M that is a company with a revenue of 4M per year. If the case of a market segment of 200M, our 20% market share will give the company a revenue of 40M. That would truly be an amazing achievement. Once FarmerNet have grown to a 20% or higher market share in our Beachhead Market, FarmerNet are ready to go into the next market segment. 

Upstream: For start-ups, at least 90% of environmental footprint comes from their suppliers. This is what we expect with FarmerNet – where existing or anticpated suppliers will have some kind of environmental footprint. Suppliers 

• Supplier guidelines include performing a chemical feedstocks inventory and exploring chemical alternatives 

• Extended producer responsibility programs 

• Regulatory vs voluntary carbon markets 

• FarmerNet ask your suppliers for their energy/water/waste data. 

• Suppliers track (and report) their energy/water/waste data Supplier selection & values: 

•Labor practices 

Clean manufacturing capabilities 

•Shipping and distribution options 

Downstream: Logistics and distribution decisions have impacts on land, air, water, energy, biodiversity, etc FarmerNet will distribute products and products’ end of life.

Once FarmerNet has become an important niche player, with a good reputation, we can expand into other markets. As FarmerNet keep working on our market research in the coming months, we will keep iterating as we gain new input and insights. The technical plan to scale our solution from the beachhead market has been split into milestones following the software engineering development life cycle. This will ensure the software goes from research to development of a MVP. The help of NVIDIA This includes researching algorithms, customizations to the dashboard, implementing the low level code, linking to NVIDIA GPU CPU hardware, setting up a revenue payment system, cloud implementation, debugging the software, and ensuring the software is sustainable and maintainable. 

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time, with widespread implications for society. Already, we have seen an increase in the frequency and intensity of fires, droughts, floods, storms, and other extreme events, and global food systems and ecosystems have come under threat. Compounding this problem, the most severe impacts of climate change are likely to be felt by the world’s most disadvantaged populations. As a result, it is critical that society take strong action within the next few decades to both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the consequences of a changing climate with technology like computer vision precision agriculture. The world emits 36 gigaton of fossil fuels in 2019 36,000,000,000 tons. This is nearly 3x higher than 50 years ago. Some of the world’s largest economies have made commitments of net-zero carbon pledges. Social economic impacts of climate impact includes fires, flooding, droughts, heat waves, and severe storms, the cost of adapting costal areas to rising sea levels, loss of the capacity to work due to heat, more wars to gain access to limited resources, fresh water will be in short supply in some areas, relocation of whole towns, decreasing productivity of harvests, and diseases will spread due to higher temperatures. Yet it disproportionally affects places like Africa and South Asia. Those who contribute the least GHG – being the most impacted with 65% of people in poverty depending on agriculture for income. 

The first step in building any network that supports innovation should be the development of a "strategic intent" statement. This can be done in many ways, but in general, it focuses on defining the growth path of innovation, whether it is the following innovations or all of the following innovations: new areas, markets, channels, business models. Use strategic and technical goals to identify ideas that match your interests. From outside and outside, look for specific groups, individuals and organizations that focus on innovation and technology development in these fields. Establish early relationships with informal exchange events and forums. The focus of these early work can be just to share best practices in the group. As informal activities continue, it will become important for a more formal approach to manage the process more effectively and ensure that the network is focused on solving the problem statement in the original charter.  The problem we chose is the intensification of climate change effects on small-scale farmers in the developing world. We know from research that climate change threatens food security through its direct effects on crop production, as well as changes in markets and food prices. The risk to the livelihood and food security of many more smallholder farmers is set to increase. FarmerNet is a safety net to empower farmers in developing countries. It measures crops and livestock producers that optimizes the agriculture supply chain by improving yields, efficiency, and profitability. The end goal is to lift people out of poverty. Carbon monitoring is a key tool for tracking progress, but current approaches are either hard to verify or expensive to scale–particularly underwater or in soils. 

Independent factors including populations who experience systematic, economic, or geographic barriers in terms of access to software and tech solutions for climate change. As the software scales through farmernet.org and it's network, it is important to make diversity, equity, and inclusion considerations with groups research design, implementation, and outcomes. This includes the following:

-       Launch funding programs that will increase the availability of financing and participation of under-represented actors in agribusiness, with particular focus on women and rural populations

-       Develop and manage a call review committee, made up of multi-disciplinary experts and with 50/50 ratio of men and women

-       Youth STEM outreach programs to encourage young people from underrepresented communities to be interested in artificial intelligence and support development of a young class of future farmers through training and financing

-       Strengthen farmer institutions, including cooperatives and unions

-       Sub-grant to successful research teams to become members of the network and implement their innovation research projects (ensuring equity and participation of different researchers in projects)

-       Promotion climate-resilient food chains among farmers

-       Scale up and replicate successful programs to raise access to quality nutrition and end hunger, including community-based nutrition programs like school meal programs; and advocacy for greater government allocation to nutrition interventions

-       Support increased production of nutrient-rich foods

-       Create safe spaces for minority groups         

-       Prioritize a DEI workforce which strives for equity, and respects, accepts and values difference by requiring all incoming employees to participate in DEI training session

-       Breaking down financial obstacles faced by low-income farmers by offering free software

-       Monitor surveys that include demographic information about users •

-       Scaling the software and how farming is different in different countries  due to social, political, or economic factors.

-       Support spiritual diversity by providing a multi-faith space

-       Mentor and teach historically underrepresented groups with inclusive lesson plans The project team also works with Indigenous education leaders to deliver proactive community-based outreach. There are barriers to entry for imaging software for Indigenous communities and we want to reduce the barriers.

-       Research how climate change will affect researching inequalities and/or underserved populations

Team is representative of technical, business, and agricultural experience allowing us to meaningfully be guided by a diverse array of input, ideas, and agendas when it comes to the design and implementation of FarmerNet’s cleantech solution. 

FarmerNet’s organizational company culture I aspire to create a better world. FarmerNet's competitive advantage includes highly scalable and modular technology, blockchain white papers, low cost installation/operations/maintenance, and being environmentally friendly.

• Make a difference (e.g.social impact)

• “Cleaning” a dirty industry

• Money-making cleantech potential

• Disrupt the agriculture industry

• Collaborative culture is the type of environment that would work well for the key types of people FarmerNet wants to hire - makes team feel supported and most productive

• Laying the groundwork for a successful culture

• Solidify collaborative culture as well as agile innovative process

• Create a dynamic process for learning and continued improvement

• Find and create benchmarks for accountability

• Collaboration with others to improve the process 

•Suppliers: FarmerNet select suppliers that reflect core values

•Employees: FarmerNet attract and retain the talent FarmerNet need

•Customers: Communicating motivational values to stakeholders to help position brand and product/service

•Investors: Thoughtful positioning help FarmerNet appeal to potential funders

• FarmerNet engage them in a way that helps build your business. 

Advisors Example of SME we will reach out to:

Sarah Ebe, Environmental Grants Associate Patagonia • Lisa Myers, Environmental Grants Program O ffi cer • Lisa Pike Sheehy, Vice President of Environmental Activism • Alex Kremer, Tinshed Ventures • Elissa Foster, Senior Manager of Product Responsibility Patagonia • Steph Karba, Environmental Researcher, Product Responsibility Patagonia • Elena Egorova, Environmental Researcher, Product Responsibility Patagonia • Sarah Hayes, Director of Materials Development Patagonia • Birgit Cameron, Patagonia Provisions • Kai Hinson, Patagonia Provisions • Anna Meyer, Patagonia Provisions • Christie Biddle, Patagonia Provisions 

• Cara Chacon, Vice President of Social & Environmental Responsibility at Patagonia • Wendy Savage, Director of Social Responsibility & Tracing at Patagonia • Rachel Kepnes, Manager of Supply Chain Social Responsibility, Farms & Special Programs Patagonia

• Alison Huyett, Manager of Environmental Campaigns and Advocacy Patagonia • Avi Garbow, Environmental Advocate, Patagonia 

MIT Solve is a marketplace for social impact innovation with a mission to drive innovation to solve world challenges which matches FarmerNet's goals.

Farmernet is a technology-based solution that uses AI and Blockchain.

Artificial Intelligence

State of the art computer vision technology allows farmers to save water by creating irrigation maps using extracted boundaries from satellite images. Crop detection to classify pest, diseases, and fertility by measuring colour changes, mechanical damage, nutrient deficiency, water stress, or soil compaction

Artificial intelligence can also gain new insights from the large number of complex climate imitations that have emerged in the field of climate modeling where state of the art computer vision technology allows farmers to save water by creating irrigation maps using extracted boundaries from satellite images. Crop detection to classify pest, diseases, and fertility by measuring colour changes, mechanical damage, nutrient deficiency, water stress, or soil compaction.

Crop prediction and image classification will be used to make recommendations for the farmers. We will consider crop-rotation, reducing monoculture and increasing self-sufficient crops like sugar, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, sunflower oil, and fast-moving consumer goods. This will help with climate-resilient agricultural food chains Since the end goal is to reduce poverty – special farmernet.org measures will be put for under-tapped regions. Crops in these areas include sorghum, millet, cowpea, livestock, maize, soybean, dairy, and poultry. Machine learning models are used to inform local and national government decisions with food and agriculture, help individuals calculate their risks and carbon footprint, and estimate potential impacts of land-based carbon sequestration like regenerative agriculture. Much of these advances stem from the availability of farm data like farm boundaries and crop pest detection. While more data does not always equate to more accurate models, having a greater availability of the same types of data from more areas around the globe can help increase accuracy.

There is knowledge of regenerative agriculture and how techniques compared to conventional agriculture and potential for reversing climate change. Incentives for regenerative agriculture where farmers can increase the carbon in soil and reduce soil degradation with methods like minimal tillage, keep residue on soil, maintain a living root, increase crop diversity and integrate livestock with cropland.

Energy, power infrastructure, and internet access within will be important for planning where to dedicate the farmer-to-farmer farmernet.org networks. This will be done by analyzing the agriculture and market infrastructure by looking at roads, irrigation, production and processing capacity development and infrastructure plans.  

The general industrialization of the agriculture field is a key goal for farmernet.org – where artificial intelligence will be the key catalyst. Looking at the geography, we will consider agro-processing zones, corridors, and special economic zones. The market size we are targeting is small-scale farmers so we will focus on corridors and smaller zones specifically targeted at linking production and farmers markets for agricultural goods with our online marketplace.

Rewards for land-based carbon sequestration addressing climate change with regenerative agriculture to reverse soil degradation by preventing erosion, absorbing moisture, feeding biodiverse microbes, and increasing soil carbon levels to preserve and restore carbon-rich ecosystems and biodiversity hotspots, whether terrestrial, coastal, or marine.

What datasets will you use for your analyses?

Mapping Soil Carbon with deep learning (implementation of papers):

https://soil.copernicus.org/articles/5/79/2019/#bib1.bibx7

https://soil.copernicus.org/articles/7/217/2021/

Mobile line subscriptions reached 98.7% of the population in developing countries. In India we have $10 phones like Jia. In nations with low or medium-level economies, there are more people with access to mobile devices than to water or electricity, according to the World Bank.In poorer regions, mobile technologies have become an opportunity to boost economic, health, educational and technological development. As smartphones are still in the minority, these services often use basic technologies such as SMS messaging.

For the inhabitants of developed countries and farmers, a mobile phone is a useful complementary tool for our economic transactions; it allows us to operate with our bank accounts, financial products and credit or debit cards. But for those who don’t have access to bank accounts and the like, a mobile phone is often the only tool available.

Blockchain

Carbon Climate Data Silos

In the digital world, climate accounting involves all processes of recording climate-relevant information/data; from the physical state of the planet to the list of all climate actors, their broad set of climate actions and agreements in respect to the shared account of the climate challenge. Interoperability is important for climate action as stakeholders are implementing a policy, providing an incentive or providing information.

Standards can help making difficult comparisons using shared protocols and MRV tools for a truly globally integrated climate accounting system. We must work together to create a trustworthy decentralized climate accounting system. Digital technology tools that seamlessly integrate all elements in a transparent and participatory climate accounting system cannot be developed in a silo.

·      Can we trust the data that the company has provided?  Claims that a report has been prepared in accordance with the GRI Standards with principles for defining report quality addressing accuracy, comparability, and reliability?

·      Can we trust judgement calls, made by either the company or a certifying entity, about which activities are not relevant and thus do not require data and auditing? How to document emissions factors used in an immutable ledger?

·      How do we know if the company is in fact working on its emissions reduction plan? Giving the auditors a digital identity by publish a hash value or certain metadata on public blockchain?

·      Can consumers and investors trust that the certifying entity is objective and standardized with a pricing distribution? How do consumers know that a "green product" is really better for the climate and that the offset buyers know that the offsets work? How do investors know that portfolio companies are achieving their climate goals? How do lenders know that green bonds and transition bonds are driving positive climate action? 

·      Can we trust the climate pledges made regularly by companies large and small? Are our cities really achieving their emissions targets? How secure is the data without cryptographic signing of any document provided or storing hash values of documents to blockchains?

Carbon Credit Standard Marketplace

Carbon credit standards reduce data silos and can be used for personal climate footprinting, product/service footprinting, entity accounting, regional accounting, and policy impact assessments. Climate change is a global problem and we are all planetary stakeholders who need to define shared protocols, standards, and platform tools for a globally integrated climate accounting system to be operationalized. Standards help people to understand each other. Standards also help people to made decisions with confidence and cooperate towards joint goals. Climate change necessitates urgent action at a global scale allowing greater interoperability between these standards.

What is standardised in climate mitigation standards? First, there are technical standards like those of the W3C. How are carbon credit emissions calculated? We have Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) which is the standard analytical method for calculating the carbon emissions of a product through its carbon lifecycle supply chain. There is also Product Category Rules (PCR) with rules define how life cycle analysis should be performed based on the type of product and can be linked to other MRV tools like LCA, PCR, and EPD. We can call these calculation methodologies or data processing standards. Application of such standards produce indicators, metrics and indices with a well-defined meaning where such outputs can be tokenised. Second, there are accounting standards, including: Greenhouse Gas Protocol the standards used for compliance in different carbon sequestration jurisdictions, voluntary standards like the Verra's Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), the Gold Standard, American Carbon Registry (ACR), or Climate Action Reserve (CAR). Lastly, we have environmental performance standards like those of the IFC to accelerate Paris Accord climate goals and certifications based on accounting standards, such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Accelerates the need for standardisation in the context of global climate action and reduced climate data silos. Application of these standards yield standards compliant reports. The contents of such report can also be tokenised in a Carbon Credit and Offset Ecosystem

1. Developers invests in projects, such as renewable energy or forestry management
2. Claims about the emissions reduction of the project is calculated under a methodology published by a verification body.  These methodologies are based on the CDM methodologies.
3. The project is registered with a verification and validation body
4. A Validation and Verification Bureau (VVB) validates the project. See for example Gold Standard’s approve auditors list
5. VVB reviews the data and independently verifies aspects of the project, to certify the amount of emissions reduced.
6. The verified emissions reductions are sold as carbon offsets, through brokers or directly to buyers. Major corporations such as Microsoft, Stripe, or CORSIA - eligibility criteria for airlines to purchase credits, ICROA, or IETA
7. Pricing References for standardization with CME Global Emissions Offsets, futures  EcoSecurities Price Index , Gold Standard Marketplace or Forest Trends EcoSystem Marketplace 

Technology: Blockchain Carbon Credits

Distributed ledger technology solutions have the potential to provide trusted record-keeping processes, data consensus and rules automation crucially needed components in order to align actors, accelerate mitigation and adaptation action, and mobilize the trillions of dollars of climate finance required annually. Blockchain technologies are by design made for solving climate challenge issues:

Buyers question the validity of the offsets as consumers are concerned about greenwashing FarmerNet builds trust with scalable technology: Higher quality of data due to standardized non-financial reporting processes and internal controlling systems. More transparency: In response to established reporting standards, and future rules and regulations. Addressing risk of double counting carbon credits, where the same project is listed on different registries and the offsets are sold several times.  The ledger audits a certain amount of block confirmations to prove color coins were sent validly and not double counted where the carbon credits were received. Costly, time-consuming, paper-based processes could be streamlined. Save money CSR costs money to implement. Costs fall disproportionally on small businesses and lower risks in simplifing the reporting with FarmerNet’s MRV tool. Better access to finance when environmental, social, and governance considerations are incorporated into external reporting.

Create trust in CO2 emissions accounts as they are transacted across industrial and national boundaries, where no trusted central repository exists by maintaining a audit trail of immutable records, so that emissions calculations could be verified later without relying on one central repository. Audits could be simplified by granting access to standard-monitoring and regulation-enforcing entities. Compliance with voluntary standards could also be made more visible, accessible, and transparent for monitoring companies and those handing out certifications and consumers. Lack of transparency in pricing standards - Increase the interoperability/integration of CSR reports of different companies where we have A lot of different registries makes it difficult for buyers to track and a very heterogeneous market with different project types (forestry, renewables, etc.) and different regions. Different offsets trade vastly differently, from under $1 to nearly $50 per ton, even though they’re all denominated in tons of CO2 emissions. One $FNET token will be exchangeable for one Carbon Removal Certificate (CRC). With FarmerNet, suppliers can sell their certificates into the marketplace and get paid in tokens as soon as a buyer purchases their credits on a first-in, first-out (FIFO) basis.

1.     Carbon credit is listed for sale in the FarmerNet market queue in a first-in, first-out basis where once at the front of the queue, the next buyer purchases the carbon credit by sending  $FNET tokens to the smart contract acting as market operator for the CRC.

2.     Owner immediately changes to the sending address tokens causing the smart contract record status to become retired and no longer allows a change of ownership which is recorded on the immutable ledger.

Agriculture-based Carbon Capture to Reverse Climate Change Rewards for land-based carbon sequestration addressing climate change with regenerative agriculture to reverse soil degradation by preventing erosion, absorbing moisture, feeding biodiverse microbes, and increasing soil carbon levels.

Blockchain marketplace for farmers to earn revenue when land-based carbon reductions get traded as carbon emission credits. Buyers can claim proof and immutability with non fungible tokens for claims of carbon reductions, sustainability, and renewable energy. FarmerNet carbon credit blockchain technology where we are looking at traceability in the greenspace consume energy consumption in your facilities, production operations, supply-chain, and distribution. We are looking at green alternatives like Chia, Hashgraph which use proof of stake vs proof or work. Blockchain technology takes up larre amounts of energy. 

Verra, Climate Action Reserve, Gold Standard

Soil carbon crediting methodologies in partnership with The Climate Action Reserve and Verra, two of the world’s leading carbon registries. These independent entities will ensure that FarmerNet’s methodologies meet the high standards for issuing carbon credits, such as project-driven changes (known as the “additionality” requirement), permanence, and realness (adequate data, evidence, and model accuracy to demonstrate real changes in soil carbon levels). The carbon removal claims underlying the NRTs that will be delivered to Stripe have been verified by Astor Global, a world-leading and ANSI- certified verification entity.

The soil enrichment credits FarmerNet generates will be issued by these registries, indicating they have verified not only the methodology, and its growers’ compliance with that methodology. Those validated, verified, once issued, will be sold to organizations, individuals, or governments seeking to purchase credits that represent demonstratable impacts to reductions in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. 

With our unique modeling + sampling approach, we will keep operating costs low on a per-credit basis, while keeping credit value high by virtue of our high integrity credits, resulting in maximum value being flowed back to the farmer.

FarmerNet’s farmers are required to submit operating data updates annually, for the 10-year Project Registration term, as well as for any outstanding Carbon Retention Contract terms. Suppliers are required to pay for 3rd party verification of their accumulated annual data submissions at least once every 3 years. Project Audit is also executed within 120 days of the end of the initial 10-year Project Registration term. The Project Audit must be executed by a white-listed verifier who did not verify either the historical practice claims associated with FarmerNet’s market enrollment application or the annual operating data updates. 

Non fungible tokens for land-based carbon credits on Ethereum blockchain. Farm-to-plate supply chain blockchain for food transparency, authenticity, and safety to provide scalable and verifiable monitoring and data collection to track ecosystem conditions, such as biodiversity, carbon stocks, or productivity.

Amount of annualized CO2 Percentage of global emissions: 

(CO2) annual GHG emissions 45,090,000 0.09% 15,780,000 0.03% 60,870,000 0.12% Cost of carbon neutrality or Cost to remove 100% Annualized transactions per 

Cost of CO2 removal per as percentage of market emissions at $17.25/C02year transaction cap on 4/7/21 $777,802,500 107,165,095 $7.26 $0.56

0.12% $1,050,007,500 Energy and resource security. 

•New approach to risk management, reducing future costs to business and community, by avoiding cleanup liabilities. 

•Mitigated risks for investors. 

Methods in place to monitor and manage energy use options for alternative energy sources such as :•On-site distributed generation 

•Renewable sources 

•Combined heat and power systems 

•Applications for Smart Grid Technologies

Partnered with 3rd party external audit companies like CRANE + FarmerNet for calculated GHG and other emissions associated for energy/ghg use

The carbon emissions token is a fungible token, whereas data on the utility emissions channel are just immutable data (not tokens), as they represent the emissions from a particular meter tied to a particular utility during a particular period of time. FarmerNet ($FNET) will be a blockchain token native to for the purpose of carrying out functions central to the operation of FarmerNet Network. These are programmable digital tokens that can be used to access the mix of functions that make it possible to verify ecological outcome and distribute rewards for those outcomes.

How will we translate standards into software? We can find the most generic articulation of what a standard, method and transaction is and develop protobuffer. For example, Namespaced Merkle binary tree  to allow each block to store multi-level data structures in a node which can be downloaded.  The header of a block from one source, the small part of the tree relevant to them from another source, and still be assured that all of the data is correct.

1. Creating tokens from emissions data where the climate data with carbon emissions records, should be updated to link to the fungible token

2.     The fungible token should contain a manifest of all the underlying data recorded in a secure blockchain encrypted database that is programmable with smart contracts with Time-stamped with proof of time VRF consensus protocol where time is recorded on a block Offsetting emissions with transactions between tokens

3.     Fully distributed where all network participants have a copy of the ledger for complete transparency and unanimous agreement to each of the records. Immutable to avoid double counting where all validated records can not be changed certifying net emissions

In the case of carbon emissions, smart contracts could support the following participants on a tokens network:

• Token authority where a network operator or a supranational/national/regional carbon authority which authorizes a number of issuers of tokens. 
• Token issuers who  auditors of carbon emissions or certifiers of renewable energy or carbon offsets.  Auditors would issue tokens based on audits of companies' operations.   Certifiers would issue tokens based on projects they've certified.
• Token concerned consumers who businesses and individuals who buy offsets to offset their own

Token Operations

• Add new token definition – Multiple types of emissions tokens can be supported on the network, such as emissions, Renewable Energy Certificates (REC's), and offsets. Issues tokens based on results of operations from audited companies and renewable/offsets projects.  Note that each issuer would be able to only issue allowed types of tokens, so an emissions auditor can issue Audited Emissions, a carbon offset developer or certifier Carbon offset tokens, and renewables developer REC's. 
• Register/Unregister issuer – In our case, it would be registering and unregistering auditors or project certifiers authorized to issue tokens with Auditors and project certifiers would register their customers on the network.
• Transfer – Emissions audit tokens cannot be transferred: They are retired as soon as issued and stay with the organization that was audited as a record of their emissions.  Offsets and REC's can be transferred until they are retired.  The total amount that could be transferred from one account to another is the sum of the tokens in their account minus the amount that has been retired.
• Retire - When a token is marked as "retired," it is counted towards the emissions reduction of the retiring organization and cannot be transferred again. 

Three Types of FarmerNet NFT Tokens

Carbon emissions offset tokens: represents reduction of emissions through projects such as forestry, sequestration, etc.  

·       Issuer ID = Certifier or Issuer

·       Recipient ID = Buyer

·       Asset Type = Emissions Offset

·       Quantity = amount

·       From/thru date time stamp = do we need this for emissions offset?

·       Metadata = type of project, location, etc.

Audited emission tokens: represents the actual emissions of an organization, as reported by an auditor.  

·       Issuer ID = auditor

·       Recipient ID = organization or entity

·       Asset Type = CO2 emissions

·       Quantity = amount of emissions

·       Metadata =

·       From/thru date time stamp = time period of the net emissions

Renewable energy certificate tokens: represents energy generated from renewable sources such as wind and solar

·       Issuer ID = Generator of REC

·       Recipient ID = Buyer of REC

·       Asset Type = REC

·       Quantity = 1

·       From/thru date time stamp

·       Metadata = Region and Time of energy enerated

BitTorrent IPFS FileCoin Metadata Storage

Each carbon credit color coin includes metadata storage as part of the Chia protocol. This includes static and dynamic data that can unlocked by smart contract functionalities. Here, we are using peer-to-peer BitTorrent files with addresses and number encoding schemes. We are using SHA1 information hash to reference the file that stores the actual data and SHA-256 hash for higher security data for metadata to be stored directly on the blockchain allowing for maximal decentralization, scalability, and unlimited size storage.

• Issuer identifier
• Recipient identifier
• Token type (carbon emission, audited emission, or renewable energy certificates)
• Quantity 
• Date/time stamp with VRF
• BitTorrent metadata
• Date/time stamp of when the asset was created with VRF
• Automatic retirement date, when the token will be retired in the account of whoever holds it at the end of the year

Proof of Time and Verifiable Delay Functions (VDF)

The blockchain building block combinations of PoS and PoT provides a premium service by being immutable and protecting against forgery of the ledger with respect to time ordering and storage. VDF which is a cryptographic puzzle piece is used to secure this system with a verifiable delay function where computations are made for a cryptographic proof that real time has passed. A verifiable delay function (VDF) is an important tool used for adding delay in decentralized applications. It is a sequential operation (like hashing a number many times: hash(hash(hash(a))) )that takes a prescribed amount of time to compute tasks that cannot be sped up by parallelism.  However once computed, the output can be quickly verified by anyone. By repeated squaring in a class group of unknown order or classg roups with a large prime discriminants, the VDF consensus algorithm is secure. Therefore we can assume that computing a VDF requires real (wall-clock) time. What makes FarmerNet different is that the farmer prover cannot buy more machines to go faster, unlike Bitcoin’s proof of work system. This can have many applications in the real world. For carbon credit tokens we might want to add the right of adverse possession of carbon that is already sequestered, or formalized squatting. Transfers must be securely timestamped with a verifiable delay function.

1. Carbon credits buy and sell transfers and their expiration date. To maintain ownership, the owner must issue a new transfer to self before expiration. For example, constructing a verifiable randomness function, or providing a “proof of elapsed time”.  They can be transferred digitally to a new owner with no need for central authorization, which has implications for ease of use, efficiency and availability.  They can be exchanged for other FarmerNet or bitcoins in a single atomic transaction – meaning there is no counterparty risk, even without blockchain confirmations. And once again the entire range of scripting options is available to allow more complex trades, such as exchanging for coins of a different blockchain with a similar security guarantee, or automated escrow. Currency could be removed from circulation or "burned", but emissions records could not be, because the physical greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere (hundreds of years at least.
2. Upon the expiration, the carbon credit may be homestead on a first-come or emergent respect basis for certain blockchain consensus algorithms.  The audited emissions tokens are retired as they're issued from an auditor to a company or consumer.  The carbon offsets could be traded but are eventually retired when used to count as emissions offsets.

Track quality of climate action accelerating UN sustainable development goals. Basic AI Blockchain technological components are integrated to establish that they will work together. This is relatively “low fidelity” compared with the eventual system. Examples include integration of “ad hoc” hardware in the laboratory. 

https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal...

A timeline of three terms over 9 months was set for the milestones above. The technical plan has been split into milestones following the software engineering development life cycle. This will ensure the software goes from research to development of a MVP. The help of NVIDIA GPUs for computer graphics and ignited modern AI in processing the image data. Incorporates all of the key production realism elements (equipment, personnel skill levels, facilities, materials, components, work instructions, processes, tooling, temperature, cleanliness, lighting etc.) required to manufacture production configuration items, subsystems or systems that meet design requirements in low rate software production.

• Industrial base viability • Probability of meeting the delivery date (e.g., for qualification units) • Design stability • Process maturity • Manufacturing costs • Supply chain management • Quality management • Facilities • Manufacturing skills availability 

This includes researching algorithms, customizations to the dashboard, implementing the low level code, linking to NVIDIA GPU CPU hardware, setting up a revenue payment system, cloud implementation, debugging the software, and ensuring the software is sustainable and maintainable.

IMPLEMENTATION 9 MONTHS/3Terms [Term1,Term2,Term3]

-       Spend more time designing the software architecture on high level

-       Engineering with the software team low level python code

-       Crop and agriculture datasets from the three milestones

-       Hyperparameter adjustment: Analysis - further exploration - visualization - processing

-       Tensorboard to display results implemented 

-       QA test debugging and iterative agile design so the software is bug free and built to agreed upon goals and specifications

-       Updating and supporting software after it has been delivered to the market

-       Reach out to organizations similar for partnerships 

-       Reach out to soil carbon specialized institutions with a focus on low-income countries and diversity and inclusion projects. 

FarmerNet’s roadmap, developed by industry and government experts, of the steps necessary to address and implement a mature manufacturing process that will significantly increase the probability of producing a product that meets program objectives of cost, schedule, and performance.  

In general, validation by external, third- party organizations provide the most credibility (e.g. national labs, certification agencies, published articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, etc).

Documented research results from in a university is currently in process. We are worried about results being subject to manipulation or exaggeration and therefore often considered less credible.

External validation is important to a startup and implemention of FarmerNet TRL plan to achieve our end software goals. 

Track quality of climate action accelerating UN sustainable development goals.

https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal...

Measurable levers for soil carbon change with FarmerNet:

-        Total ENERGY IMPACT: Estimate the annual market volume of the new technology at maturity and multiply the per unit energy impact in 3.3.A. by the annual market volume (e.g. kWh / year).

-       Soil inoculation - not enough data to answer that question

-       Define the energy source (e.g., electricity, natural gas, gasoline, diesel) and how it is used in the baseline technology.

-        Total GHG REDUCTION: Estimate the annual market volume of the new technology at maturity and multiply the per unit annual GHG reduction in 3.3.B. by the annual market volume (MT CO2e / year).

-       Till / no till - plenty of data whether forest or farm with What kind of crop

-      Quantify the per-unit, annual energy impact of the baseline technology (e.g. kWh / square foot year).

-       How are you growing? Cover cropping, inter cropping

-        Using publicly available resources for GHG emissions factors, quantify the per-unit, annual GHG impact of the baseline technology, based on energy impact

-       How many tree species / diversity - managed forestry or natural regeneration

-  Quantify the per-unit, annual energy impact of the new technology especially with carbon credits on the ethereum blockchain which takes up a lot of energy (e.g., kWh / unit / year).

-  Calculate the potential per-unit, annual energy savings for the new technology vs. the baseline technology, or 3.1.B. – 3.2.B. (e.g. kWh / unit / year).

Future steps to increase TRL Developing a Technology Maturation Plan (TMP). If the TRL level for a CTE does not meet the expectation level at each Critical Decision level (especially for CD-2 and later), then a maturity level gap exists that requires further evaluation testing or engineering work in order to bring the immature technology to the appropriate maturity level.

Milestone

-       Merge the soil organic carbon dataset with the environmental covariates dataset in order to start training a model in GEE based on historical averages of environmental covariates.

-       Conduct literature review into rates of soil carbon sequestration based on land management practice and land use type to develop a comprehensive research database of carbon sequestration rates. 

-       Soil carbon depends on environmental factors such as climate, land cover, and soil conditions so understanding these covariates and their impact on soil carbon will be critical to modeling future scenarios.

-       Soil samples have been collected heterogeneously across time and will need to be appropriately distributed and correlated with covariate data to be useful. 

-       These samples can be tested against OpenLandMap to improve the quality of and error-checking of the ML approach to carbon estimation. 

-       Development of a research database for carbon sequestration rates by land use can then be used to test the predictive model under different future scenarios.

-       Field measurements of soil, such as ISCN, WISE, and RaCA.

-       Environmental covariates: EarthEnv, WorldClim2, SoilGrids, WCS, GEDI, satellite imagery, and other sources.

-       Landsat data going back to 1970 with OpenLandMap data

-       CGIAR based on : https://www.soilgrids.org/

-       Carbon Drawdown database

-       Carbon Farming Solution

Milestone

-       Outline the known gaps in soil organic carbon field samples and outline research priorities.

-       Outline known gaps in rates of carbon sequestration under different land use scenarios and outline research priorities.

-       Outline the need to understand the top-line soil organic carbon stock potential based on environmental covariates and land use scenarios. 

-       Select the top scenarios describing the potential for additionality over business as usual and write up a report brief for policymakers. 

-       Hypothesis:

-       Forecast 10, 20, 30, 50 year sequestration rates using practice-based trends:

-       historical trends (do nothing)

-       stop all human intervention (other do nothing)

-       humans intervene in the best way (best case)

-       Somewhere in between (middle case)

Milestone

-       Develop a model based on known sequestration rates attributed to land cover, land use change, or land management practices that can describe the potential additionality for each land use over time. 

-       Create a map-based user interface so that users can interactively create their own scenarios based on their own assumptions of the adoption of regenerative practices.

-       Naively train a baseline model that predicts depths of 30cm or 100cm, soil organic carbon stocks for each land use type we can describe the potential for additionality under different scenarios. Candidate algorithms include random forest, explainable gradient boosting machines, and TabNet.

-       Through this process we also hope to identify environmental predictors for soil organic carbon growths and losses.

-       Batch photo upload and labeling with Pl@ntnet dataset for plant identification where the shared dataset contains 306,293 images of 1081 species that retain a level of ambiguity allowing it to be trained for farmernet’s computer vision precision agriculture model with detail.  For example, there is a very large number of anemones and that they are often distinguished only by details such as the shape of the petal or the way the leaves are inserted on the stem. 

Long term climate change development

Farmernet will need to ensure that the agricultural organization has expertise focused exclusively on climate-smart agriculture  in the next 30 years. The  best practices and how to adapt to different local contexts and career in climate change issues that spans the past significant developments in the space.. They will also need to possess the technical skills to evaluate proposals for the design and development of agriculture climate risk tools and products by investing in level systems and data to support Climate-Smart Agriculture practices and agriculture sector resilience; develop the acquisition, application and management of big data for resilience decision tools and services; invest in country-level infrastructure and training for meeting targets, monitoring GHG emissions and supporting innovation; support the design and development of agriculture climate risk tools and products.

Market infrastructure: build market centers with a focus on integrating the strategy’s focus value chains into market selection, planning, and support; the Bank will also build associate service infrastructure such as warehouses, cold storage units, feeder roads, among others

Reach: Communication is the key to influence with farmer-to-farmer networks. Companies need to attract audiences who can make the most of your work or benefit from it. Effective coverage requires active communication within and outside the  farmer’s normal network to obtain the best knowledge. This is why SMS without internet and access to the Ethereum marketplace helps with increasing the farmer’s reach to create an improved Agribusiness Environment. The food value chains cost an estimated $315-400bn over 2015-2025 with sufficient funds in capital markets if they can be appropriately mobilized to transform agriculture with computer vision

Engage: Help the audience understand the climate research innovations by adapting relevance and pertinence to their needs and expertise. Ideally, the project will attract stakeholders to participate. Improved smallholder knowledge of technical best practices through extension, including intercropping, use of organic fertilizer, integrated pest management (IPM) and other practices known to increase yields

Change: The real impact requires changes-attitudes, practices, policies, processes and products. The business can help this process by establishing relationships with individuals and organizations that can conduct research.

Amplify: Change is the beginning of impact, but to achieve the size of the effect, a consensus must be reached on the effect. The use of advocates, cooperation and the media are the key to a major, far-reaching and lasting impact.

Policy: Strengthening of marketing and governance structures of farmer cooperatives and unions. Advise and provide support to farmers to put in place efficient regulation and legislation to enable private-sector-led development of agribusiness. Build institutional capacity to develop and implement policy, as well as to monitor and evaluate gains in agriculture through relevant ministries, para-statals, and others while promoting trade farmer-to-farmer. Key policy areas include land tenure (only 10% of  rural land is registered with women’s access to land is on average less than half that of men), input subsidies, incentives for local production and processing,  financial sector deepening, and regional trade integration

Verra, Climate Action Reserve, Gold Standard

Soil carbon crediting methodologies in partnership with The Climate Action Reserve and Verra, two of the world’s leading carbon registries. These independent entities will ensure that FarmerNet’s methodologies meet the high standards for issuing carbon credits, such as project-driven changes (known as the “additionality” requirement), permanence, and realness (adequate data, evidence, and model accuracy to demonstrate real changes in soil carbon levels). The carbon removal claims underlying the NRTs that will be delivered to Stripe have been verified by Astor Global, a world-leading and ANSI- certified verification entity.

The soil enrichment credits FarmerNet generates will be issued by these registries, indicating they have verified not only the methodology, and its growers’ compliance with that methodology. Those validated, verified, once issued, will be sold to organizations, individuals, or governments seeking to purchase credits that represent demonstratable impacts to reductions in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. 

https://devpost.com/software/f...

In general, validation by external, third- party organizations provide the most credibility (e.g. national labs, certification agencies, published articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, etc).

Documented research results from in a university is currently in process. We are worried about results being subject to manipulation or exaggeration and therefore often considered less credible.

External validation is important to a startup and implemention of FarmerNet TRL plan to achieve our end software goals. 

1. Published research articles 

Published research that identifies the principles that underlie this technology. References to who, where, when. 

2. Internal / pending research that is not yet public - if so, can that be confirmed by third parties? What vetting processes has that research gone through? Publications or other references that outline the application being considered and that provide analysis to support the concept. 

3. Patents: have any been published yet, if not, at what stage of application are they? • Patent-pending – Product, component, hardware, software, computer-generated icon (design), composition of matter (chemical, drug) • Technical solution to a technical problem • Limited applicability to business methods • Can be defined as a combination of elements or method steps • Where the combination is novel and not obvious

Reference articles that DO NOT support regenerative agriculture - https://www.ketchum.com/regenerative-agriculture-isnt- technically-sustainable/ - https://www.eitfood.eu/blog/post/can-regenerative-agriculture- replace-conventional-farming 

- https://civileats.com/2021/01/05/does-regenerative-agriculture- have-a-race-problem/ - https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/jul/18/sustainable-isnt- a-thing-why-regenerative-agriculture-is-foods-latest-buzzword 

Land Management Programs ( https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/... focused) programs/financial/rcpp/ https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/... programs/financial/ama/ https://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and- services/conservation-programs/conservation-reserve- program/ https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/... programs/financial/eqip/ Farm investment platforms: https://gosteward.com https://farmtogether.com/ https://www.acretrader.com/

4. Other products (from your company or other companies) using the same underlying technology? Competitive Advantage through warding off competitors FarmerNet is different than other products from competitor • Difficulty detecting infringement • Difficulty reverse engineering • Lifespan of technology • Likelihood of licensing patent vs. providing “know-how” consulting to customer under NDA • Consider “defensive” publication to prevent others patenting the invention Intellectual property such as patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets The best-known way to protect your (technical) invention is to file a patent. This gives you the exclusive rights to commercialize your invention for at least a period of 20 years. Supplier agreements This is similar to customer agreements, but now your goal is to achieve long-term agreements with key suppliers. The way to get a long-term commitment from your suppliers is the same as with customer agreements: you guarantee revenue.

Has your product (as distinct from the technology) been validated by any third parties (e.g. national labs, universities, research institutions, certification organizations, pilot customers)? If so, what stage are these validations in (preliminary talks, pending, completed)? FarmerNet’s patent portfolio defensively • Use to counter a 3rd party assertion of infringement • Force cross-license to provide freedom to operate FarmerNet’s patent portfolio offensively • Build a patent “wall” around products/processes • Assert to prevent copying of products/features (product differentiator) • License with a royalty to maintain a pricing

Other alternatives • Patent – protects an invention • Provisional patent application • Non-provisional patent application • Country-specific • Design patent – protects non- functional ornamentation of an article of manufacture • Copyright – protects an expression of an idea • Trademark – protects a brand • Trade dress – protects commercial look and feel that identifies source • Trade secret, know-how – protects proprietary information • Open source – purposefully not protected

• Engineers

  • Solve difficult problems

  • Design systems and solutions

• Marketers

  • Develop brands

  • Identify market needs for products and services

• Managers

• Coordinate engineering

and marketing efforts with business opportunities, according to business objectives

• IP Administrator

  • Formulates and

    implements IP protection

    strategy

  • Coordinates patenting

    process

• Patent Attorneys

  • Protect company’s IP, including advising on type of protection

  • Advise clients about IP owned by competitors, including “designing- around”

  • Defend against assertions, by competitors, of infringement 

REFERENCES 

Jones, N. (2017). How the World Passed a Carbon Threshold and Why It Matters. Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. 

Dennis, B. & Mooney, C. (2018). ‘To date, we have failed’: Worldwide nations struggling to meet goals outlined in Paris climate agreement two years ago. National Post. 

Raza, A., Gholami, Rezaee, R., Rasouli, V. & Rabiei, M. (2019). Significant aspects of carbon capture and storage – A review. Petroleum. 

What are the main types of carbon capture and storage tech- nology? (2011). The Guardian. 

Esrafilzadeh, D., Zavabeti, A., Jalili, R., Atkin, P., Choi, J., Carey, B. J., ... & MacFarlane, D. R. (2019). Room temperature CO 2 reduction to solid carbon species on liquid metals featur- ing atomically thin ceria interfaces. Nature communications, 10(1), 865. 

Minx, J.C. & Nemet, G. (2018). The inconvenient truth about carbon capture. The Washington Post. 

Factors including populations who experience systematic, economic, or geographic barriers in terms of access to software and tech solutions for climate action. As FarmerNet's software scales, it is important to make diversity, equity, and inclusion considerations with groups research design, implementation, and outcomes. This will ensure gender equity and the inclusion of other marginalized groups research design, implementation, and outcomes. Independent factors including populations who experience systematic, economic, or geographic barriers in terms of access to software and tech solutions for climate change. As the software scales through farmernet.org and it's network, it is important to make diversity, equity, and inclusion considerations with groups research design, implementation, and outcomes. This includes the following:

Female-led with a diverse representation in the founding team. We are dedicated to increasing the representation in STEM research. Collect sex disaggregated statistics, with gender-sensitive baseline.

Youth STEM outreach programs to encourage young people from underrepresented communities to be interested in artificial intelligence and support development of a young class of future scientists through training and financing 

Scale up and replicate successful programs to raise access to quality healthcare for everyone everywhere, including community-based programs like senior care disease outreach; and advocacy for greater government allocation to healthcare interventions by strengthening partnerships, cooperatives and unions to promote collaboration for rare diagnostic community 

Prioritize a DEI workforce which strives for equity, and respects, accepts and values difference by requiring all incoming employees to participate in DEI training session - Develop and manage review committee, made up of multi-disciplinary experts Monitor surveys that include demographic information about users  

Mentor and teach historically underrepresented groups with inclusive lesson plans inclusive of Indigenous education leaders to deliver proactive community-based outreach. Reduce barriers for Indigenous communities and financial obstacles faced by low-income by offering free software

-       Launch funding programs that will increase the availability of financing and participation of under-represented actors in agribusiness, with particular focus on women and rural populations

-       Develop and manage a call review committee, made up of multi-disciplinary experts and with 50/50 ratio of men and women

-       Youth STEM outreach programs to encourage young people from underrepresented communities to be interested in artificial intelligence and support development of a young class of future farmers through training and financing

-       Strengthen farmer institutions, including cooperatives and unions

-       Sub-grant to successful research teams to become members of the network and implement their innovation research projects (ensuring equity and participation of different researchers in projects)

-       Promotion climate-resilient food chains among farmers

-       Scale up and replicate successful programs to raise access to quality nutrition and end hunger, including community-based nutrition programs like school meal programs; and advocacy for greater government allocation to nutrition interventions

-       Support increased production of nutrient-rich foods

-       Create safe spaces for minority groups         

-       Prioritize a DEI workforce which strives for equity, and respects, accepts and values difference by requiring all incoming employees to participate in DEI training session

-       Breaking down financial obstacles faced by low-income farmers by offering free software

-       Monitor surveys that include demographic information about users •

-       Scaling the software and how farming is different in different countries in Africa due to social, political, or economic factors.

-       Support spiritual diversity by providing a multi-faith space

-       Mentor and teach historically underrepresented groups with inclusive lesson plans The project team also works with Indigenous education leaders to deliver proactive community-based outreach. There are barriers to entry for imaging software for Indigenous communities and we want to reduce the barriers.

-       Research how climate change will affect researching inequalities and/or underserved populations

Implementation - where there is a large initial capital linking to farm agriculture. Farmers who are age 50 are risk adverse and less likely to adapt to risks associated with emerging technologies. However, times are changing and software that took days or weeks to run now takes hours.  

The average U.S. farm household had $1,042,855 in wealth in 2020 and average farm family income is forecast to have increased 8.6% to just over $194,000, driven by increases in Net Operating Income. The average net worth increased by 4.1%, to $3.4 million per farm or 444 acres.

Average farmland size acre 444 acres === $6.660

$16.50/acre * 444 acres/averagefarm =$7,326 revenue $8-10 million Revenue = average farm 

We have 3 different tiers to address bot B2B and B2C farmers. Consumers can have many reasons to buy, economic and emotional. Simplified: in a B2B context, think profit. Farming customers will do business with us because that will somehow increase their profit. In a B2C context, think better or less expensive. Customer will buy product (or service) because it is less expensive, or better.

FarmerNet has a pretty good idea how much it costs to build your product. But entrepreneurs often don’t realise what costs are involved with actually getting customers to sign for a sale. It takes time and money to talk to potential customers and not every sales effort leads to an actual sale. These oftenoverlooked costs need to be taken into account, because they will have a direct effect on our profit 

Software As A Service Model Farmer-First Carbon Market $25/credit

• Buy directly from sustainable growers

• Evaluate the farms and fields from which you are

  buying

• Quantify the carbon impact of any parcel in the US

  Purchase individual or bulk credits

• Bulk pricing available for purchases over 250 credits.

  Computer Vision Precision Agriculture $9.99/month

• Search by Owner & unlimited owner information

• Unlimited Access to Land Reports

• Unlimited Access to Yield & Environmental Impact

  Calculators Build & Save Custom Fields Unlimited search across US

  Enterprise Ag & Land Insights Enterprise Licenses 

• Unlimited access to Insights Build custom fields & portfolios, with aggregated land stats 
• In-season and historical verification of cover-cropping, tillage, and rotation
• Efficient carbon credit and incentives quantification
• Easy grower enrollment

Three Pricing Tier Farmer-First Carbon Market $25/credit

• Buy directly from sustainable growers

• Evaluate the farms and fields from which you are

  buying

• Quantify the carbon impact of any parcel in the US

  Purchase individual or bulk credits

• Bulk pricing available for purchases over 250 credits.

  Computer Vision Precision Agriculture $9.99/month

• Search by Owner & unlimited owner information

• Unlimited Access to Land Reports

• Unlimited Access to Yield & Environmental Impact

  Calculators Build & Save Custom Fields Unlimited search across US

  Enterprise Ag & Land Insights Enterprise Licenses

• Easy grower enrollment

• Efficient carbon credit and incentives quantification

• In-season and historical verification of cover-cropping,

  tillage, and rotation

• Unlimited access to Insights Build custom fields &

  portfolios, with aggregated land stats 

Business model

-       Software as a service a 3 tiered model

1.     Fee-per-study

o   Low entry price

o   Clearer ROI

o   Not tied to specific farmer

o   Closely align cost to use

o   No product training required

o   No additional resources required

2.     Annual subscription with maintenance contract

o   Minimum capital investment

o   More affordable with a predictable payment schedule

o   Flexibility - add/remove farmers as needed

o   Set price is easier to budget for

o   Software is always up to date

3.     Perpetual lisence with maintenance contract

o   Lowest total cost of ownership over the long termo   Software is not "cut off” when subscription expires

o   Specific to farm building long term data

o   Vendors are more accountable

Competitive Advantage

Pricing the carbon credits/ farmer’s profit

We investigated partnering with companies like Nori (competitor) who offered Hill’s credits for $16.50 per ton, with $1.50 going to Nori and $15 to Hill. A total of 342 buyers purchased 8,010 tons’ worth of credits out of 14,011 offered. 

Three Year Financial Projection: 

Cost

FarmerNet’s development path will bring down the cost of soil carbon measurement and verification through operational improvements and efficiency achieved through continued scale, model recalibration, and technology development to enable in-field soil testing. The cost of soil carbon storage is mainly determined by: 1) payment of a fair price to landowners, 2) the cost of measuring soil carbon, 3) the cost of regenerative grazing consultancy grants, 4) the cost of operating FarmerNet’s AI Blockchain technology to find additional farmers, buyers and facilitation of transactions.

The current cost of soil carbon measurement is high, due to the elaborate tasks of sampling 3 ft deep cores on a ranch. Over time these costs are expected to reduce due to economies of scale and the introduction of novel intelligent measurement approaches (drones, soil-probes, etc) in combination with modelling. Conventional to regenerative agricultural practices. 

Present Cost:

$25 Premium product. This will the price for each farmer with a $5 MRV and 500k-2M/year tons per year of CO2 captured

Future Cost in 5 – 30 Year:

$15. As time increases and adoption of cleantech technology increases, the price will decrease. The MRV will reduce from $5 MRV to $1 MRV for each ton of CO2 captured. This will be dependent on the farmers, who have control on how much soil carbon is sequestered.

We expect 0.5 Billion-0.7 Billion of CO2 captured/year in the future The scientific consensus is that our SOC stocks have the capacity to grow by 100% to 140%, where 100% assumes we are simply returning existing SOC stocks to where they were 300 years ago.

Future cost value in 100 years to rebuild all available SOC stocks back where they were 300 years ago. Then with FarmerNet, that equates to just under 2 billion TCO2 e/year of CO2 drawdown potential, for each of the next 100 years in US. 

Price

The other major driver of the price of a ton of soil carbon sequestration is the payment to the farmer. Scale and the farmer incentive are linked. As the world needs carbon drawdown (demand increase), more and more famers – enabled by FarmerNet’s platform – can deliver that impact, potentially reaching huge volumes of cumulative carbon sequestration across the world’s agricultural and pastureland.

The price FarmerNet will set for soil carbon storage is determined by: 1) a market price and competition, 2) a fair price for “Soil Carbon Storage Plus” – the value of the additional benefits (ecology, water, rural economics resilience) perceived by the carbon storage buyer. We anticipate that the price for opportunities to store atmospheric carbon will (significantly) increase over time, due to a higher demand and potentially tighter supply. As in any business, the sales price is based on value and is not coupled to cost (as long as price>cost).

Volume

The high growth scenario reaches 100 MMtCO2/yr in 2030 and works with 51 MM acres of grazing land, or 51,000 ranchers [assuming 1000 acres/ranch] [eq to 7.8% of US grazing land]. The moderate growth scenario reaches 15 MMtCO2/yr in 2030 and works with 7 MM acres of grazing land, or 7,000 ranchers [assuming 1000 acres/ranch] [eq to 1.1 % of US grazing land].

The scale of the capital requirement depends on farm size. But transition is most difficult for those who farm less than 1,000 acres. FarmerNet is working with agriculture service providers we call “Data Managers” to develop opportunities for small farm operators to share fixed data collection, retention and verification costs, to make the market more accessible to them. 

1. Environmental improvement - It is important for companies to engage in sustainability.

   • Apply a Total Cost Assessment Methodology

   • Improve decision-making process by

   • considering and comparing all potential

   • environmental and social costs between

   • projects and market channels.

   • Agriculture land use makes up 25% of all GHG

     emissions (116 billion tons of carbon)

   • Soils naturally sequester TRIPLE more organic

     carbon than the atmosphere

   • Reduce water use 80%, Reduce energy 30%

   • Reduce land use 100:1

   • “Right Thing to Do"

   • Good for Business

   • Climate change

   • Carbon sequester

   • Inevitable Resource/Environmental Issue

   • PR/Consumer Backlash

Go to Market Strategy

Relevant stakeholders within the agriculture market. The $1,500M, 125,000 Farms, Regional Market with Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) - $50M, 4160 Farms, Commercial Cash Crops Beachhead Market. 

• Upstream (suppliers/manufacturers) 
• End user (customer) 
• Downstream (recycling/landfill locations) 
• Internal employees 
• Communities, special interest groups

- Upstream: FarmerNet creating jobs in the production or materials needed for your product that did not exist before. Suppliers conduct business in a responsible manner with care towards sustainability. 

- Product use/end-user impact: FarmerNet improving the health, environmental or economic well-being of those using your product or service

 - Downstream: Community positively/negatively impacted

Potential Regulators (Federal/International Government)

Given Biden's $30 billion fund to pay farmers to implement sustainable practices and capture soil carbon. As a cleantech solution focusing on regenerative agriculture. Scaling regenerative agriculture and carbon. Laws, policies, regulations, administrative rules (such as those governing carbon crediting streams or blockchain regulations with tokenization) to look for incentives: tax credits, carbon credits, subsidies, procurement preferences, and programs that support clean technology commercialization in the agriculture space

• USDA National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) 
• Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) 
• Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) 
• Since Legislation that sets forth goals and standards that can be voluntary or mandated. 
• Public Policy Resources Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency
•  Federal Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy programs 
• National Governors Association Center for Best Practices 
• NACo: National Association of Counties: Energy and Environmental policy initiatives 
• National League of Cities: Center for City Solutions (Sustainable Cities)

FarmerNet’s Core Product: We may be able to dictate best available technology if/when carbon credit markets in the agriculture space standards become mandatory. 

We will focus on building a community of farmers. Selling to businesses is very different from selling to consumers. A significant difference is that businesses almost always buy for economic reasons. Also, the sales process usually takes a long time and regularly more than one person is involved on the client side.

A commitment in time involves farming potential customer committing some more precious time for a follow-up meeting, giving you access to expertise in the organisation, or making time available within the organisation to work on a collaborative project. Commitment in reputation can be shown by introducing you to other relevant people in their networks. An important question you should ask at the end of a customer interview is: “Who else should I talk to?”. 

People that knock on your door and sell you water heater to reduce your electricity bill. Sales cycle like California’s Sun power. Quantify the benefits FarmerNet actually can deliver. Need to know this because it helps understand the optimal price point: Cost x $ - pay rebates Government pays Value ⁃ Updated water heater ⁃ Cheaper electricity We analyzed the farmers land prior to the sales cycle - Scan globe for Carbon credit Data ⁃ Generated 4 carbon credits worth $6000 ⁃ We have a buyer ⁃ You don’t have to do anything ⁃ Sign this ⁃ We take 10% ⁃ THEN get the customer there We know where the carbon credits are.

• Brand

• Features

• Packaging

• Tech

  Places for Farmers

• Stores

• Website

• Online

• Events

  Promotion

• Ads

• PR

• Social Media

• Email Marketing

• Search Engine

• Promotional Video

  Price

• Discounts

• Exclusive Offers

• New Trial Signups

• Bundling deals

• Credit terms

• Referrals 

Competitive Advantage through customers

1. Customer lock-in or barriers to switching providers. Look for ways to make it difficult for your customer to switch to your competitor. Gillette razors use a particular type of blade that only they provide. HP printers use particular cartridges. Take a look at Apple’s app store, as well. Your Apple addiction is cemented by the apps you’ve purchased.

2. Customer agreements. Try to sign long- term contracts with your customers. Energy providers do this all the time by trying to sign customers for 2-5 year contracts. Offering benefits that increase as contracts lengthen are a way to make sure customers stick with FarmerNet. The benefits of having longterm customers should outweigh the reduced income caused by offering the discount.

3. Customer loyalty through branding. Building a brand that customers want to associate themselves with creates customer loyalty. Apple is once again a good example of a brand with extremely loyal customers. As a start-up in (most likely) a B2B environment the equivalent could be delivering exceptional service to your customers. 

$FNET Sale Agreements for Future Tokens (SAFTs)

FarmerNet token holders will have the ability to participate in the carbon removal economy with our carbon credit tokens. This incentivizes stakeholders to come together and govern a shared system to achieve ecological accounting with a DAO governance. Tokens will raise funds for the continued growth and operation of FarmerNet to create a two sided liquid carbon credit marketplace with third-party exchanging of the $FNET tokens. This establishes a standard and price incentives for carbon stakeholders to remove CO2 and get paid in $FNET. Standard blockchain DAO governance applied where color coin tokens can be staked to be used in the governance processes. Stakeholders who have staked their position can vote on polls and voting power is assigned a weight by the total amount of staked $FNET each holder has. Therefore, users with a larger amount of $FNET tokens will have more influence on voting with a limit of an individual holding 30% of $FNET to ensure fairness of protocol governance agents. Tokenization via $FNET cryptocurrency enables a new method of financing carbon removal. The main way to purchase these color coin tokens will be through an Agreements for Future Tokens (SAFTs) will give project supporters the rights to receive token allocations once FarmerNet is operational. From the initial Token Generation Event (TGE) forward, newly minted tokens will be issued by FarmerNet.

Private securities offering of Simple Agreements for Future Tokens (SAFTs) conducted under the Regulation D 506(c) exemption to accredited investors. Following accordance with SEC regulation rule 144, SAFT contributors will receive their $FNET a year after signing. Buyers of either Class A or Class B SAFTs must be accredited and due-diligence will be made with a minimum purchase fee. No single individual or entity can hold more than 30% of the tokens and exceptions will only be made case-by-case with a contractual requirement. Community crowdfunded securities offering conducted under Regulation CF. Public sale of tokens to anyone so that they can use them to purchase credits on a first-come first-serve basis. A buyer wishing to pay for the removal of 10,000 tonnes of CO2 would purchase 10,000 carbon credits in $FNET plus a commission fee. In terms of technical roadmap, we are in beta testnet development with Chia color coins. There will be a 3 month window after mainnet is launched to keep the supply increase more dynamic. Token supply at mainnet launch will be 500 million tokens with 5 million tokens representing 1% of the total supply. Inflation will be between 7-20% which is to account for the rising price of carbon credits (from $25 to estimated %170) relative to the percentage of $FNET staked with distribution of 500 million $FNET tokens:

·      350 million unlocked tokens will be sold in both a private securities offering and an ongoing legally compliant public offering sale after the mainnet market has launched including additional fees like legal, tax, audits and exchange approvals

·      100 million tokens will be set aside for an insurance fund to cover faulty carbon removal certificates will be locked with minimum 1 year with a discount schedule depending on the 3rd party verifier stability pool

·      50 million tokens will be held by the FarmerNet community team (founders, employees, investors, DAO treasury, and advisors), non-sale allocations, company bootstrapping funds, and go-to-market strategy  to be staked permanently. DAO governance with airdrops where staking rewards are managed with 33% voting power for long term sustainability with linear unlock of 5 years