Apps Challenge - IT-Farm - a centralized system to facilitate the collaboration between farmers and restaurateurs.

Name of App
IT-Farm - a centralized system to facilitate the collaboration between farmers and restaurateurs.
Description of App

Our application seeks to solve the problems of both entities (farmers and restaurateurs) by creating a centralized system to facilitate the collaboration of farmers and restaurateurs. With this system restaurateurs will be able to search for a particular crop in a particular region whether it be in close proximity or not. They will be presented with information about the crop such as the various prices, location, supply rate and the quality of the crop in that particular region. All this information is pulled from the frequently updated Junar website: http://www.junar.com/dashboards/4625/jamaica-dec/

The buyers can even go further to see information on all the farmers that grow that particular crop in that area, information such as name, location and contacts of the farmer, buyers can even use the system to contact the farmers right away and arrange business transactions. The system is accessible to farmers who may not be apt using a computer. IT Farm can instead facilitate their interaction with it through simple use of their mobile cell phones. With their mobile phones farmers can register to IT-Farm themselves and add the type of crop they produce by sending a short SMS in the correct format and with the necessary information and our automated system will do the rest. The farmer will now be promoted to buyers that use the system and potential business transactions will now be made. The system will feature an ever growing list of commands to facilitate interaction via SMS, for e.g. a registered farmer to broadcast a message to all registered farmers in his/her local vicinity, IT-Farm will enable the user to just text “alert freshly sprayed calaloos where stolen from my farm beware of quick cash sales men with a small quantity of calaloos!” to the system via a dedicated phone#. Then the IT-Farm web service should then retrieve this message and broadcast it to all nearby farmers registered.

Primary Developers
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Problem Being Solved

 

An Intermediate system needs to be developed to aid farmers and restaurateurs engage in mutually profitable transactions. Farmers produce crops but at times it may be difficult to find a suitable amount of buyers (within a specific time frame), in order to allow their strategic crop rotation and selection cycles to flow smoothly and profitably. While on the other hand restaurateurs and food houses are often in great demand of quality produce. Farmers and restaurateurs need a cost-effective and social platform upon which they can, participate in a closed user groups, and advertise the products/services which they offer.
IT-Farm is the equilibrium where supply meets demand , “An App for that” could be released to facilitate these services via Blackberry device, An Android Smart phone, and other Smart phones utilizing their awesome user interface to bring a great look and feel to the client.
However keeping goals and limitations in sight while trying to minimize costs and meet the needs of the users of the system , One has to consider the fact that although Jamaica cell-phone penetration is rated at 110% and smart phones are quite prevalent, farmers tend to not be so technologically equipped. As a result, it was clear that we don’t need an “App for this” , or an “App for that” what we need is an “App for ALL” so to speak, for the smart and not so smart phones alike.
Solution
Technologies
App Category
Agriculture
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