Growia

The Problem

Commercial-scale farming is one of the biggest drivers of biodiversity loss, deforestation, unsustainable land use, soil degradation, intensive agrochemical usage and many other environmental issues. In an era in which the human population shows rapid growth, expansion of large-scale commercial agriculture will lead to more land-use change, more deforestation, more agrochemical usage and intensifying biodiversity loss. We believe not having proper knowledge on how commercial agriculture results in biodiversity loss, deforestation, unsustainable land use, soil degradation, intensive agrochemical usage and not having proper motivation/need for home gardening are the two main reasons for commercial agriculture to create such destructive negative environmental impacts.

Our Proposal

Promoting home gardening and small-scale farming, which would ensure existing land is used efficiently, is one of the best sustainable solutions available for the growing demand for food. Making people grow their own food (at least a portion) locally will definitely reduce the environmental stress on remaining protected areas and it will also help to reduce other negative environmental impacts of large-scale commercial agriculture, which will ultimately help to protect biodiversity. To achieve it we propose to build a social media application named Growia to encourage and educate people on home gardening and small-scale farming. We believe Growia would drive a behavioural change in people, creating a trend on home gardening and small-scale farming letting people adapt, learn, practice and share their experiences with the world. Growia will motivate people to adapt to new lifestyles, consume healthy food, reduce environmental stress on remaining protected areas. Automatically when the community is requesting for healthy foods which are grown without using intensive agrochemicals, large-scale farmers will also become more environmentally responsible. Growia contains gamification features to keep users engaged by giving them points when they share their progress and bonus points when they achieve special challenges. Collecting points will result in winning badges which will enhance their profiles as well as they can use the points to boost their posts to increase their reach.

We Assume that...

1. Our expert environmentalists will conduct an unbiased review, acceptance/rejection as well as rating the posts submitted by the community.

2. Our expert environmentalists will post awareness creation content related to positives of home gardening, small-scale farming as well as negative impacts of commercial-scale farming.

Constraints to Overcome

We believe not having proper knowledge on how commercial agriculture results in biodiversity loss, deforestation, unsustainable land use, soil degradation, intensive agrochemical usage and not having proper motivation/need for home gardening are the two main reasons for this problem to be unaddressed even to date.

Current Work

1. Mobile app development work to build up the necessary features 2. Server-side development work to facilitate the application features 3. Development of the post rating algorithm based on the positive impact the user's action is creating with respect to having a better planet 4. Formulating a panel of expert environmentalists in order to review, accept/reject, as well as to rate the posts 5. Building up the strategy on getting the panel of expert environmentalists to post, awareness creation posts to the platform to educate the community. 6. Onboarding the general public to the platform

Current Needs

1. Cloud account for backend infrastructure and database management 2. Mobile app development and publication resources (Apple developer account, Google play account, Tools for development) 3. A panel of expert environmentalists 4. Marketing resources to take the application to the community