Proposal: Sustainability hints throughout the app

Owned by Lite Farm
Last updated: Oct 21, 2022
2 min read

Video of session (first half), password: ^NmSdb7v

Problem:

LiteFarm purports to focus on sustainability but doesn’t actually provide guidance on sustainable practices.

 

Context:

Suggestion to improve LiteFarm’s “sustainability” aspect.

 

Per Kevin: We’ll be tackling GHG calculators in 2023 - this could be a good place to incorporate some suggestions too.

David thinks we have a great opportunity through UBC and other universities for graduate students to incorporate these types of suggestions regionally.

Proposal:

Proposing “Sustainable tool-tips” throughout the app, which could combine tracking of past crops and behaviours with recommended suggestions

 

A few examples:

  • Look at previous crop plans on a particular location and suggest suitable companion plantings. These can discourage pests - e.g. planting tomatoes and corn in the same location season after season can encourage corn earworm that can colonize both. This type of tooltip could reduce the need for pesticide and fungicides.

  • If a farm has a lot of weeding tasks, we could suggest mulching and link to an article on how to do it and it’s benefits.

  • For harvesting tasks, could have different harvest techniques to assist. For example, apples are best stored at 30 - 35 F with 90 - 95% relative humidity.

 

Benefits:

Provides the user with suggestions for how they can possibly move towards more sustainable practices

 

Presentation link:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1eyIrd72weF1lrvAvKOv26RuR5N-tT9PZcUkbIkpXPjs/edit?usp=sharing

Feedback from the group:

@Duncan Brain: Do you see this as an interim solution on the way to these suggestions becoming more “core” features in the future or is this the end of the road on this?

@David Trapp: Would love for this to be more “core” to the platform, but likes the tooltip because users that aren’t interested can bypass it easily. Studies have shown (which?) that sustainability needs to be pulled from the user rather than pushed on them.

@Duncan Brain: For things that are both sustainable and best practice, like low till.

@David Trapp: The definition of “best practice” is hard to quantify and changes from region to region. For example, best practice for optimizing profit may not be the same as best practice for some other goal. There are valid reasons someone may not focus on sustainability in the short term. This could also lead to regional resources (including financial and extension).

@Lite Farm: It’s always been a goal to connect farmers with locally appropriate resources, like extension and grants.

@Richard Wasswa (Unlicensed): LiteFarm doesn’t fully support farmers right now. For example, the connectivity requirement is a barrier.

@Carolina di Lello (Unlicensed): Might be nice to have a page for grouping and viewing all tooltips that user had seen in the past. A way to follow-up on it when you have slack to investigate.

@Richard Wasswa (Unlicensed): Need to be getting feedback on users and take guidance from data they are entering into the system. Should invest in partnerships of farmers who can give us all this feedback.

Execution:

@Lite Farm: If we wanted to implement this we could incorporate a few easy thumbs up / thumbs down “Was this helpful?” to gauge user feedback. We could also do a A/B testing with a user group.

@David Trapp: Going to Hannah or UBC and finding someone that could incorporate this.