The Single Biggest Thing You Can do to Boost Your Health and Save the Environment
By: Anuj N Varma
Tags: Csa, Startup, Foo, Farm, Community

Community Supported Agriculture!

Mother Earth today has her fair share of difficulties to deal with from issues like climate change, water pollution, and deforestation. As individuals, it can be so hard to find things we can do in our lives to help fight all these problems. Enter Community Supported Agriculture (CSA for short). CSA’s are mom and pop farms that grow and sell food locally. Instead of eating food that is shipped overseas on fossil-fuel intensive planes, you can help your community out and get some of your weekly grub from your local farmer.

But I’m a millennial who doesn’t use bulletin boards to find out about local opportunities, so how do I connect with my local CSA’s??

There’s an App For That

Sprout is a mobile and web marketplace connecting communities to local CSAs. Our mission is to empower people to eat more locally and make healthier choices. The idea was born out of a desire to make our modern lifestyles more sustainable and support small businesses. Our team came together at Dartmouth College, in a class called CS98 headed by the illustrious Tim Tregubov. CS98 is a capstone course at Dartmouth where students organize in teams to build an idea they feel passionate about. Through the two terms of this course, we pinpointed exactly what the problem was and built a solution.

The Problem…

Our mission to inspire people to eat more sustainably motivated us to speak to a lot of people to better understand the market. We spoke to several farms in our area and learned more about existing CSA infrastructures and noticed the tremendous challenges that local farms are facing today.

On the one hand, local farmers have a hard time keeping track of, reaching out to, and finding customers in their area and on the other hand, people have a hard time locating and subscribing to local farms. These problems on the buyer and seller side of this marketplace prevented sustainable agriculture from growing. A need for a centralized, online platform where local farmers can manage their farms and customers can discover new CSA’s became apparent.

…And the Solution!

Because we were faced with the unique challenge of helping local farmers with operations as well as aiding customers in searching for farms, we created two parts to a platform; a consumer facing app and a farmer facing website.

Our Mobile App

Left to Right: Market, Inbox, and Profile

The mobile app serves exclusively the customers. In the app, there are three main tabs: Market, Inbox, and Profile

The Market tab is the center for CSA discovery and subscription. In this tab, there is a list of nearby CSAs segmented into CSAs already subscribed to and those not yet. There is also a Google Map view of all the CSAs in the vicinity. Once you select a CSA, you will be directed to the CSA’s profile page which details all relevant info along with pictures. Should you decide to subscribe, you will be taken to the Subscription page where you can select different types of subscription, payment methods, and delivery methods. If you select upfront, then it will take you to the payment screen where you enter credit card info. In the Market tab, you will also get notification polls asking you to review the week’s produce.

The Inbox tab is the center for messaging with the subscribed CSAs. You can create chats and send messages. Here you also receive announcements from the CSAs.

The Profile tab is the center for profile information and payment management. Here, you can see profile info like account info, address, etc., and you can also edit those info. Additionally, you can manage subscription payments here. If you choose to pay it, it will take you to the payment screen where you can enter the credit card info.

Our Website

The Farmer Profile Page Above

The web app serves exclusively the CSA farmers. In the app, there are three main screens: Profile, Members, Messages, and Analytics.

In the Profile screen, you will find all the info about the CSA that the consumer will see on the mobile app. Here, you can edit information such as CSA style, share price, pickup location, and add/edit/delete payment plans.

We believe Sprout will help ease the transition for CSA farms into the digital age, and more importantly, the platform will grow the CSA community by making CSAs more accessible, both financially and also through technology.

On the farm’s side, the app fits seamlessly into the existing way of operation for the farm, as we have flexible, customizable payment plans and farms can keep their current methods of distributing CSAs, CSA style, etc. On the customer’s side, the flexible payment plans and the easy-to-use app make managing CSA subscriptions much more convenient and hassle-free.

The Future of Sprout

Our Team from Left to Right: Angi, Sia, Yifei, Kristie, Anuj

After completing the app and website, we took the tool we created to the market to test its usefulness. We were energized from the raving reviews from local CSA’s who saw Sprout as a platform that they could seamlessly integrate into their farming operations. Our platform turned out to be a massive boon for local farmers so much so that we managed to get a farm onboard our platform this coming growing season!

Additionally, showing the app to family and friends also demonstrated the massive value this provides to consumers by creating an easy-to-access all-in-one place for discovering, subscribing to, and communicating with local farms.

We are confident that the Sprout platform will provide a useful tool for CSA farms wanting an easy interface to manage their customers. Our mission is to create a more sustainable planet through supporting local agriculture and as such, we feel that the Sprout app makes significant progress towards achieving this goal. Users feel like they have a 21st century platform to view and find local farms in their area.

What started as an idea has proven to be an exceptional learning experience and a multi-platform, live application. We are as excited as ever to share our product with you. To try the app out, click the link here and be sure to leave a comment below (we love feedback!).