The Local Food Project

Note: We’ve changed name of the proposal from FoodMiles to ‘Local Food Project’

Proposal for BSIC - Decentralized Impact Incubator

• https://www.blockchainforsocialimpact.com/
• https://bsicimpactincubator.slack.com/
• https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/Weekly-checkpoints-09FvI6B1wAuT7qqVvw7kz
• https://joshpitzalis.svbtle.com/foodmiles
• https://workflowy.com/s/C_Yv.YUjxnt5doU

Reply to josh post on slack channel:

Why Community Supported Agriculture?

Hi #agriculture and #teaming, I’m on @Josh team. We are 4 developers, one in Vietnam and others in India. I’m interested in #agriculture since most of my country people are farmers producing small-scale products.

Despite living in different countries we have the same problem we are facing daily:

• How to secure healthy food sources for us and our families?
• And how to shorten food supply-chains to reduce waste and make them more social and environment friendly?

So when @Josh proposed the FoodMiles to reduce the distance food needs to travel before it can be consumed, I jumped in immediately.

Turns out that not only developing countries but developed countries facing the same problem too, and they already have a solution for that: named CSA or Community Supported Agriculture.

What’s CSA?

This paper shows that despite the implementation of CSA soluion can be different from country to country, the principles should be the same. Arcordding to URGENCI - The International Network for Community Supported Agriculture, these principles are:

• Partnership: usually formalised as an individual contract between each consumer and the producer, and characterised by a mutual commitment to supply one another (with money and food) over an extended period of time, beyond any single act of exchange. The contracts, oral or written, last for several months, a season or a year.

• Local: CSAs are part of an active approach to relocalising the economy. But local in the CSA movement is not restricted to a geographical meaning. The idea is that local producers should be well integrated into their surrounding areas: their work should benefit the communities which support them.

• Solidarity: between producers and support groups and involve: Sharing both the risks and the benefits of an healthy production that is adapted to the natural rhythm of the seasons and is respectful of the environment, natural and cultural heritage and health. Paying a sufficient fair price up-front to enable farmers and their families to maintain their farms and live in a dignified manner.

• The producer/consumer tandem: is based on direct person-to-person contact and trust, with no intermediaries or hierarchy.

Why CSA on Blockchain?

Those principles show that CSA share same characteristics with blockchain:

• Community driven
• Peer-to-peer (person-to-person in CSA)
• Decentralized (localization of CSA)
• Trustless (contract & mutual commitment in CSA)

I belive that blockchain is a greate tool to make CSA solution more completed and effecient that can be applied world-wide. For example, in France comsumers use cheques to release money monthly to producers. In Vietnam, cheques are not in used and we Vietnamese are lacking of financing tools to do the same thing in France.

We are looking for

I’m happy to listen to feedbacks from everybody:

• To improve and evolve FoodMiles proposal
• To understand problems CSA’s comsumers, producers and communities (as a whole) are facing right now
• To come up with a better solutions that can apply in reallife situations to help people produce and comsume food healthy, effeciently, social friendly and environment friendly.

We also looking for team-members who interested in our proposal with any but not limited to following skills/experiences: design, supply chain, small-scale farming, finance, research … to join us to build a practical platform. Understanding advantage/limitation of blockchain will be an advantage.