Big Data in a Box, LLC — Department of Agriculture SBIR Phase I: 8.119999999999999

Description

Record-keeping is a general problem among all farmers. Organic farmers in particular struggle to bridge the growing gap between supply and demand of organic products for several reasons — top among them being record-keeping chores. Small and mid-sized farmers face this issue more acutely as they transition to or work to stay certified organic. A recent study of 1800 farmers showed that ~40% report record-keeping as a key obstacle. Record-keeping and filing require- ments vary by the type/variety of crops and produce. Because a typical small or mid-sized farm owner grows multiple types of crops the record-keeping and filing tasks become onerous and often dissuade farmers from seeking organic certification. Big Data in a Box LLC (BDiB) pro- poses to develop validate and commercialize an easy-to-use portable device to capture and dig- itize the requisite data to make it efficient and affordable for these farmers to transition to or- ganic or to maintain certification. As envisioned the BDiB software will be provided via sub- scription along with cost-effective data-capture device. Phase I goals are to develop 1) a cost- effective and easy-to-use system that supports farmer-owner facility/certification compliance and 2) an innovative robust cost-effective portable edge-computing device that is network-inde- pendent. Testing will be carried out on local/regional farms for Phase I proof of concept. Commercialization Potential The current retail market for organic products was valued at $50 billion by the Organic Trade Association and is growing at >20%/yr. compared with 1% growth in the overall food sector. Reducing the barriers to record-keeping will facilitate growth in transitions and to stay organic thus meeting the growing demand. BDiB's Smart Portable Interactive Data Extraction and Re- porting (SPIDER) tool will help farmers reach this goal. Once we successfully test and validate our tool with participating farmers we propose to market the tool via a subscription service to small- and mid-sized farmers initially to the organic sector and later to all other farmers. Our market potential covers small- and mid-sized farms which constitute 94% of the 2.1 million farms nationwide. With a subscription pricing at $60 per year for the basic tool we hope to reach a significant portion of the market in five years or less. Because our tool is based on an edge- computing model the user has more autonomy with the data collection storage and use.