AgriFootprint

AgriFootprint, the project of the Innovative company Bioinvest-Agro (Ukraine), contributes to the development of adaptive to climate change technologies for growing crop products, greening of technological processes of food production, improving product quality. The aim of the AgriFootprint project is to create a service for the assessment of carbon footprint of agricultural products in the process of growing. Also, it is the tool for sound adjustment of agrotechnological, organisational and management decisions by food producers of plant origin. The service meets demand among crop producers and will create a new niche of eco-economic services.

Challenge

Carbon, that’s a word on everyone’s lips – it is the basic building block of all living things on the planet, and yet when too much is liberated into its gaseous form, carbon dioxide it has the capacity to warm the atmosphere to dangerous levels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has, in its 6th Assessment Report, confirmed that without further deep reductions in emissions we are on track to exceed 1.5 degrees of global warming, and the potential to devastate the complex planetary systems upon which all life relies. A key way to address this ongoing challenge is not only through reducing carbon emissions, but also to restore the balance of carbon in the atmosphere through sequestering carbon dioxide thanks to ecological cycles. And the subject is hot in agriculture. It is both one of the sectors that emits the most greenhouse gases, but also the one that has the greatest potential to store carbon in its simplest form, the soil. It is a sad paradox that the atmosphere contains too much carbon while the soil lacks it. Carbon measurement tools, models and monitoring methods are being developed. Labels and certification frameworks are emerging such as the EU Digital Passport and Sustainable Product Initiative. Compliance based and voluntary carbon markets are growing in maturity and new avenues for seeing carbon as a valuable resource are emerging. Opportunities are everywhere. At the moment, providing a carbon indicator means extensive audits, which takes time for the farmer and involves plenty of intermediaries. A lot of paperwork, and a lot of value that doesn’t go to the farmer itself when the carbon credits are sold. While at the same time, on their farm, sits farm management information systems, sensors, and other data sources that could be combined with open data and external data to run models for carbon footprint evaluation, quite seamlessly.

Work Plan

1. Create repositories, CI/CD and infrastructure for algorithm testing purposes cluster: 1 month
2. Develop modelling software for different approaches: 3 months 
3. Perform testing and fine-grained tuning of modelling core with software from p.2: 2 months 
4. Develop site and one commerce version of modelling core: 2 months Some part of steps could be started in parallel.