agilefarming.com

A project that I created in my spare time.
This page is currently a work in progress.

the Project’s conception

This is a story that all begins with compost. In 2016 my wife and I purchased our first home in Austin, Texas. This was the first house that either of us had owned and it had a sizable backyard. At the time I just began an interest in backyard gardening, and like some of our friends, we started to save all of our vegetable scraps, and yard waste and begin composting.

When I find a new subject or activity interesting, I often go onto YouTube to see if there are any instructional videos or information about best practices. TI found advice on the proportions of Brown (Carbon waste like paper and wood) to Green (Nitrogen waste like vegetable scraps and lawn clippings) materials. How to deter certain critters (like out two mischievous dogs) from entering your compost pile, and materials to use to contain your compost pile.

If you’ve ever started to watch a particular subject of videos on YouTube, it may also happen to you that you start to go down a series of “wormholes”. Videos that are the same or connected in their subject matter that you continue to watch, and before you know it an hour has passed. From composting I soon began to investigate backyard gardening and urban farming. Soon I came to Urban Farmer Curtis Stone’s YouTube Channel. Curtis gives expert advice about optimal planting and growing of numerous vegetables in smaller urban spaces. He also gives business advice for urban farmers, and has a book published on the subject. I then came across a video titled HOW TO: Farm Land That You Don’t Own. This video is about how he leases small land plots in his local urban space.

At the time I was about five years into my UX career, and had often had ideas from time to time about different applications and platforms that might be able to solve an unmet need in the market. And after watching the above video I asked myself “Could an AirBnB like platform exist for these Small Scale Farmers?”

The Discovery Phase

I started my research searching for some high level metrics on urban farming. One surprising metric I found is that 800 million people worldwide practice some sort of urban farming. The National Urban Farm Training Initiative at Tufts University in Massachusetts’ mission is to help new and prospective farmers launch and succeed in their business. In 2013 they reported that 5,700 farmers participated in a farm incubator program in the United States. These farms give new farmers the opportunity to learn new skills and knowledge, while using land as part of their tuition. Put this use of land is for a limited time A major goal of these incubator farms is to have its participants move on to acquire land of their own, and be self supporting. My hypothesis is that offering a platform to lease land to farm in urban and smaller land plots could serve an unmet need for these farmers.

Upon doing some persona research on urban farmers I found that digital tools and technology are becoming key tools of urban farming. The newest urban farmers most likely have had some office job experience. So the adoption of new digital tools to help them accomplish essential tasks would seem to be a natural one. There have been many innovative tools created in recent years to help farmers productivity and efficiency. They allocate space to the inch for crops, and choose crops by analyzing the combination of yield and market demand. I then began to synthesize the research and my hypothesis on market opportunity into a business plan / pitch deck that I called AgileFarming.com (At one time I had a landing page up at that url, but it isn’t published anymore.)

Proto Personas

I began the design phase by creating to two user proto personas from my research that seemed most apparent. The first being the urban farmer searching for land to farm. The second being the landowner that would be enticed into offering a section of their land for a farm lease. I created these proto personas based on my research about urban farmers, and my assumptions about the type of land owners that would find this concept interesting. Actual validation and direct generative research on individuals that fit these proto personas is still needed for validation.

The Urban/Small Scale Farmer Proto persona

Behaviors and Actions:

• Plans out crop space allocation to the inch

• Selects crops to plant based on their profitability

• Creates relationships restaurants, grocery stores, farmers markets, and CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture Farms)

• Are sustainability and environmentally conscious

• Are eager to try new tool, techniques and technologies to be successful

• Is continually streamlining their process to maximize time and profits

Needs and pain points:

• Needs access to land to farm with as low a risk as possible

• They don’t want to take on debt if possible

• Needs to optimize every square inch of land

• Needs tools and techniques that save time and produce profitable crops

• Relationships with local restaurants, grocery stores, farmers markets, and CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture Farms)

Demographic and Psychographic Details:

• Has most likely worked an office job

• Is tech savy

• Are most likely “beginning farmers”

• Would like to live close to the land they farm

The Landowner Proto Persona

Behaviors and Actions:

• Are sustainability and environmentally conscious

• Is health conscious

• Wants to know where their food is coming from

• Believes in the benefits of building and improving their local community

Needs and pain points:

• Needs to be bought into the holistic benefits of leasing their land

• Wants to be compensated fairly

• May want to lease land for trade in crops

• Needs to trust to farmer that would have access to their land

• May need social validation to be bought into this concept

Demographic and Psychographic Details:

• Has an established career

• Is a home owner

User Journeys