Urban Renaissance Farming App - URFA: A 21st Century Urban Farming Platform
This article by @kimzwarch is part of a creative blockchain investigation series. Learn more about the #dappexplorer project here.
During my pursuance in the architectural practice, I came about the concept of urban farming which is now getting more limelight in the major city like NYC, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Amsterdam and etc. Through the integration of IoT with advanced farming technology, urban farming is made possible which could fit into any available spaces in the city. This could largely reduce our dependency on having our food planted in a distanced, unknown farmland, which ultimately increases the food security of the city. Moreover, it is harder for us to find any fresh produce nowadays as the industry is heavily dependent on packaging and preservation so that the food can be sold in an appealing form.
On the other hand, in Penang, my hometown, I found that there are underutilized shops spaces especially the terrace shops. There are a few factors that caused such a situation:
- Location not strategic
- Accessibility problem for pedestrian and vehicles
- Relatively high rental
- Lack of diversity of usage
So, the idea came by when I see these three elements: growing demand for healthier food choice from the consumer, promoting of urban farming from the local government and the underutilized shop spaces who owned by locals and foreigners. Acting as an urban farming planning consultant behind the scene, I would like to create a platform that could facilitate these three segments of people: consumer, farmer and property owner. In terms of value proposition, we provide consumer a wide range of healthy fresh produce available locally; a farmer or potential farmer to be an alternative to set up a smart farm in the city, and property owners to generate an income stream by utilizing the spaces through urban farming.
The platform will be running on DApp (decentralized application) format which will also extend to web-based usage. Within the platform, there will be its own token that supports the ecosystem which allows different transactions like acquiring produce, paying rent, buying equipment, paying bills and so on. Besides, the platform will have a collection of different spectrum of data like urban farm location, productivity, food variety, farm condition, business transaction and so on. To pull this off, it will require collaboration between different parties to form a vehicle to work this out.
The ultimate aim is to make the app become a real-time library to track for fresh food for the consumer, a form of food security meter for the city and a new way to farm for the farmers. Besides, this also will improve the value of the properties that are previously underutilized and evolve into another form of the prime area which then help the owners to earn more revenue. From the perspective of the local government, it will also improve the local GDP as this will create a whole new industry for the city with an innovative way to utilize the resources from the city.
This post was authored by @kimzwarch, a member of the sndbox incubator. Learn more, follow @kimzwarch or begin a conversation in the comment section below.
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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://sndbox.blog/urban-renaissance-farming-app-urfa-a-21st-century-urban-farming-platform/
Very good. Though, there is still something I don't have quite clear. It's going to be, for users, an App to buy food and a tool to potentially become also a producers? Are you going to provide only the connections necessary for marketing or it will also provide connection with professionals in order to help whoever is interested to build their urban farms? It is awesome, anyway. I wish these things could happen in my city, Cumaná, in Venezuela.
You guys are awesome.
A while ago I was researching about some interesting things. I wanted to cultivate at home, and found a sort of "fundition" by these people:
https://www.noocity.com/
This was their video of crowdfunding, for Indiegogo. They were offering not only a product but also education, in a sense, about what is best for planting, how it's possible for you to cultivate in cities. To sell their product they were also teaching viewers good practices to take care of your garden and your plants.
Thank you all, guys, who come up with this great idea to bring good stuff into our lives beyond (or against) any threat of "the future", or whatever that was supposed to make us loose our hope of a better world.
Thanks for such an insightful comment. Noocity is indeed interesting on how they work this model out. Basically, my idea is more or less the same which I also referred to Kimball Musk's Square Roots. This idea is still pretty raw and there are a lot of technicalities to be solved before could get into execution. Nonetheless, it is a first baby step for me to write it out and seek for comments and advice from the community :)
Another interesting project that you could look into which started their kick starter crowdfunding: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1903306293/greenbelly-vertical-urban-garden?ref=discovery
I know! Feedback is so important. As an artist I see my creation as also other's, in a sense, eather if they add something directly, or indirectly by feeling it, interpreting it, taking a side in relation to my music, or my lyrics, or whatever I express through.
I will check those both projects. Thank you! I admire a lot the work you, guys, do. And you, @kimzwarch, are so lucky to be part of @sndbox.
Greetings!
Yup, love the process and interaction. To me, it is a different kind of experience and state of mind when I’m designing and ‘completing’ a design.
Ya, I felt so lucky to be part of @sndbox. Glad to be able to express myself through this platform as well as this incubator. Nice to know you too @siomarasalmeron!
Thank you, @kimzwarch. I already took a look to what you showed me, the other projects. They're awesome, mostly the vertical urban garden is an amazing idea. In Venezuela they have been also promoting urban agriculture, but it doesn't excite people anywhere. For example, where I live people comes here from a rural life, so it's a bit confusing the contrast between what they come in pursuit of and what is behind. You know, movement and everything. Now we need people to cultivate, but people want to work in air conditioner and offices, so... Complicated. But it's ok. "We" are here. I'm not a farmer but I support, in a sense.
I see, it is true that urban agriculture is still a niche in most part of the world. Yet, the potential for it to develop into a reliable alternative for traditional farming is huge. Again, to transition into a new way of doing things is always something hard. I favor urban farming and gotta have patience to ‘cultivate’ the culture.
Cultivate the culture is a great slogan. I whish you sucess, and a lot of experience and useful learning and acknowledging. Greetings! I will wait for your updates.
Thanks @siomarasalmeron! Will be updating time to time about this.
ideas like these will transform civilization towards a healthy interdependent existence. I think part of the solution must include a global movement towards sea water filteration and desalination.
You might want to look into Earth Ships
Best wishes and keep up the good fight 👍🏼
Thanks for dropping by and giving more perspectives. Definitely will look into that if the city is nearby to the sea like Netherlands, Denmark and UK. This also applicable to where my hometown is, Penang island of Malaysia.
yes, but also very few governments seem to make it a priority. My city is by the ocean, yet the government has no plans to build any desalination plants, crying out the high cost, meanwhile they are spending money to build massive sport stadiums; and we have been going through a chronic drought over the past decade +. I also think that the next step should be to build an infrastructure to transport this water to cities that are far away from water sources, we've done it to transport oil, which in the near future will no longer be an essential element for survival. There is just a general lack of foresight and poor priorities that if not corrected will cause a massive collapse to many of our modern cities.
Wow, This is a great App. I would love to give a trial. Farming App
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Thanks @matthewhonyit! It is still in an ideation stage :) If there are any updates I will surely tag you.
This year I started to plant some edible plants in pots on my balcony because fresh produce is often expensive and tasteless. Urban farming may provide fresher and more tastier produce especially combined with lowering pollution levels. I hope you will consider using the steem blockchain for such an app.
Will definitely consider Steem blockchain as its backend support and ya, who could resist fresh and tastier produce just proximate to our city homes! Thanks for dropping by @calatorulmiop!
Always happy to encourage eco-friendly projects :)
Yup, love to do something for our living environment :)