Breaking Down Dimitra’s Connected Farmer Platform: The Use of ‘My Crops’ to Support Diverse, Resilient Farming Systems
A key part of the Dimitra solution is the Connected Farmer platform, a mobile application that will be available at a discounted or free cost to smallholder farmers around the world. At Dimitra, we believe that accessibility to agricultural technology is an integral part of sustainable farming, and the Connected Farmer platform embodies this commitment we have to supporting smallholder farmers. The application’s key functions are designed around making farmer’s lives easier with tools and infrastructure for record-keeping, data collection, communication, planning, and reporting. The second module of this platform is My Crops, an organizational tool used to manage all the operational aspects of running an agricultural business, and in this article we will break down how it can help farmers transition to more sustainable crop management practices.
Sustainable Agriculture Necessitates Micromanagement
In the global shift toward sustainable agriculture, we are seeing an increased appreciation for the complexity of soil and land systems. Regenerative, climate-centered farming is focused on building rich soil biology and encouraging biodiversity in our agricultural systems so that they are more robust and resilient to threats and have an increased ability to sequester carbon. However, the industrial agricultural system of the last century has been far-reaching in its transformation of traditional farming into intensive monocultures, which are mostly mechanized and use high volumes of glyphosate and synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to maintain yields in poor soils. Ongoing research and studies are showing that major crops such as coffee, oil palm and corn amongst others can be grown with more sustainable high yields and profits in climate-friendly polyculture systems compared to monocultures. Polycultures are systems in which more than one crop is planted in a given area at one time and also offer farmers diversified income opportunities and backup plans in the case of crop failure.
Transitioning away from these monocultures into more diverse and resilient polycultures presents many challenges for farmers who may appreciate the theory of sustainable agriculture, but simply don’t have the education, resources, time or tools to actually transform their operation. However, for farmers that have been monocropping their land for generations there is a significant gap in education and training when it comes to communicating current sustainable practices, and it is unfair to place the entire burden of system transformation upon these individuals and families who are just doing what they have always done. Additionally, the simple fact remains that monocultures are easier to manage than intercropped, biodiverse polycultures, and this is a large part of the reason they evolved to dominate global crop production in the first place. For the mission of sustainable agriculture to be truly successful in its attempt to revolutionize how we grow food, there needs to be adequate resources available to assist farmers in juggling the many linkages between their various crop schedules, soil building and tailored harvesting, weeding, irrigating and general maintenance of advanced systems.
‘My Crops’ Helps Farmers Manage Diverse Growing Systems
As an integral part of the Connected Farmer platform, My Crops aims to address the difficulty farmers may face in managing the different aspects of their operation while transitioning to more sustainable practices. Dimitra appreciates that moving toward more sustainable growing systems with regenerative practices like intercropping, cover cropping, and crop rotation all require more advanced tech to manage the many moving parts, and that is why a large component of the Connected Farmer platform is dedicated to crop and soil management. My Crops is essentially an all-inclusive portal where farmers can access and manage the cycles of all their different crops, including soil preparation, seed sowing, weed management, irrigation, harvesting, storage and shipping, as well as sections to help set up sensors and prepare for farm audits. Here at Dimitra, we believe that smallholder farmers are the pioneers of sustainable agriculture, but in order for them to succeed they need access to the appropriate tools to steward advanced biogeochemical food systems, and the My Farm module has been designed for this purpose.
Investing in the Connected Farmer Platform
The Dimitra Token Initiative is a way for investors to actively participate in the growth of innovative platforms like the Connected Farmer application, and actively contribute to improving farmer livelihoods. The Dimitra Token will increase in value over time, and it derives its value as a direct result of its utility within the Dimitra Ecosystem. Since the Dimitra token is backed only by its actual usage and not by extrinsic assets, it is critical to model its economic utility, which is more efficient and productive than traditional business models. The Dimitra Token has a capped supply and offers a simple, easy to stake process via our website. As the Dimitra Token is an ERC-20 based token launched on the Ethereum network, transactions are always verifiable and transparent via Etherscan and the Ethereum blockchain.
Endnotes
Henk Rikxoort, Götz Schroth, Peter Läderach, Beatriz Rodríguez-Sánchez. Carbon footprints and carbon stocks reveal climate-friendly coffee production. Agronomy for Sustainable Development, Springer Verlag/EDP Sciences/INRA, 2014, 34 (4), pp.887–897.10.1007/s13593–014–0223–8. hal-01234838
Hoffner, E. (2021, March 31). Can palm oil be grown sustainably? Agroforestry research suggests it can, and without chemicals. Mongabay Environmental News. https://news.mongabay.com/2021/03/in-brazil-palm-oil-is-being-grown-sustainably-via-agroforestry/
LaCanne, C. E., & Lundgren, J. G. (2018). Regenerative agriculture: merging farming and natural resource conservation profitably. PeerJ, 6, e4428.
