Topic: [ NEED YOUR OPINION ] Online farm (food). (Read 324 times)

You actually did a good job we have found that this concept can be done and we all have found a working model like you posted, but you can still go on and make it exclusive for cryptocurrency holders, I think that site accept fiat or a currency that is not cryptocurrency, while you can make your own for cryptocurrency holders.

Today I did lil research (I had to do it before posting) and found this: https://www.farmizen.com/
Well, at least this business model is working. So, I think, I'll close this topic, since it's no more actual and will think about something else, again thanks to everyone who gave their opinion, I very appreciate that.

So basically you're looking to merge the Pollofeed / live chicken feeding  - Bitcoin Lightning gag with a form of real life Farmville?

What infrastructure have you got to pull this off? Ideally, you would need access to vast swaths of real cultivable land and enough labor force on standby - do you have that?

I have seen a lot of farm related investment programs online lately and so far this is the only option for the investor to receive the vegetables itself and not the profit. After the transparencies and legitimacy of your business my main concern is of course how will you transport vegetables? As we all know they are perishables that can go rotten quickly, chances are if the user is very far from your farm then they'll receive the veggies rotten. For people who don't have the option to receive their veggies fresh you should at least give them the option to just take the profit from their investment.

It's funny that you say futures (I am assuming in an ironical fashion )because the first ever futures were contracts negotiated for agricultural commodities. Since prices of crops tend to fluctuate the futures contract serves as a hedge for the buyer and supplier against price fluctuation. Financial futures, on the other hand, are, relatively speaking, a very recent phenomenon.

I'm not sure if you've ever heard of HelloFresh but they basically put that concept into practice. With the addition of meat and fish and other protein-based ingredients for the customer to prepare an entire meal. They also work with subscriptions, so as long as your subscription is valid you receive a package every so often.

Sure but most larger chains still work with really low price margins, mainly due to strong competition. And I am not sure if the costs saved by cutting out the middle man outweigh the distribution and transport costs from the farmer directly to the consumer. And more importantly the lost convenience. Don't get me wrong I am all for cutting out the middlemen but I don't think we can replace low-margin supermarkets with a cost-efficient alternative (as of right now).

Yes, it makes sense and I will think about it, but we talking about perishable foods, and it's hard to predict, how much, and what kind of vegetable people will buy before starting the growing process.

And another part of this idea - it let people grow any vegetable, I mean sorts, that not really that common and you can't simply find them in store or even grow something using their seeds.

Why all the effort with ordering ahead, live streams of growing, and virtual ownership, instead of just having online orders? If your customers can order online (ahead of harvest day), you save all the hassle and still deliver the same product. Unless of course the main goal is to make it like a game, but I don't expect (recurring) customers for that.

Supermarkets indeed buy at low bulk prices, but their sales price is several times higher. Cutting out the middle man is beneficial for both farmer and consumer, but distribution is more difficult.

I think at the first stage, it can be opened just for a few central cities, with a few greenhouses located near to these cities to resolve this "shipping" problem.


I'm not really the fan of ICO and not one of tho people, that like to integrate blockchain or shitcoins in everything, where no really needed in it. Max, I will accept crypto as one way of payments or will create simple blockchain that will include info about vegetables and their growing progress.


Yes, I thought about splitting land on "sectors" by a specific vegetable/crop, instead of growing everything at a small part of the land. And I like this idea about percents, it can be turned into something crazy like the market, where people can trade with each other using an kind of online shares on vegetables or idk, futures?   

I'm also starting to think about "packages" which will include most popular vegetables, that most of the people buying every week and let people buy something like a year "subscribe", one payment and they will be getting this package every week.

But, the more I start to think about this idea, the more I see how not ideal is it. And I really thankful to all who gave their opinion and showed me weak sides, because that's why I created this topic.

There are people who like to buy in bulk but, at least where I live, this is only a small minority (might be different where you're from). Over the last decades, technology has been making our lives more and more convenient. If your goal is to attract a large customer base you should always keep the convenience of your service in the back of your head. Because I feel like if your service does not make the current way of things convenient I doubt it will grow beyond a niche start-up.

If you're looking to be able to grow any vegetable, I'm assuming you will have to work with greenhouse agriculture technology because I don't think it's possible to naturally grow any vegetable in one single location. This is certainly possible but will be an additional cost since you need to buy and install the infrastructure necessary.

It's up to you to do the math and figure that out  .

So this is what I would do.
In Belgium there exists this concept of sharing a cow. You can go to their website and basically order a part of a real cow. Only when the entire cow is ordered the cow will be slaughtered and divided into equal packages (this to ensure that the entire cow is used and nothing is put to waste). As soon as 100% of the cow is ordered your meat will be delivered to your house for free (for more information you can head over to https://www.deeleenkoe.be/nl). This concept has been around for some years and has been quite successful.

You could do something similar for your project. Instead of directly assigning a parcel of land to each customer I would rather set bigger parcels of land up for hire. On each parcel, you grow a specific vegetable/crop. The customers are able to purchase a certain percentage of the land (or rather, a percentage of the vegetables that parcel produces). Of course, customers can buy percentages of different parcels of land that grow different types of vegetable, this way the customer can build up a diversified portfolio of veggies  . Around this concept, you can build a dashboard that allows your customers to keep track of the progress etc. The benefits of this, as opposed to your original plan, is that it becomes a lot more cost effective to provide these additional features you mentioned. For instance, instead of having to set up an individual live stream per customer you can now set up one live stream per parcel of land. Since multiple customers bought the parcel of land you now only have one live stream to provide them with.

You wont really have any choice if you wont able to get some sufficient support on the big companies you have said.Your option or last resort would be doing some sort of ICO.

It isnt a bad concept after all yet its being said 40-50% save up compared to current vegetable market is really something.The only problem i do see that this would be only
good for those people who are just residing near on OP's place but for far countries it would really be hard since these are perishable things.

That's a good idea but it will be confronted with a lot of issues but if you are so serious about this, then you can ask a big company that also deals with vegetable to take up with your idea, it will need huge funding but it's not impossible to implement, I hope you will not do an ICO for this, this is a good idea to be ruin by ICO again.

Love the idea but I think you need to solve the problem of shipping before you invest anything. I used to run a business doing more than a million £ in sales but net profits were low due to high shipping costs. I ended up eventually closing that business so that I can focus on the other fast growing business with better margins. I simply could not beat the likes of Amazon. Either don't ship or ship local or build a food trading marketplace to connect growers/buyers. Talk to local shipping discounters to see if you can get bulk discounts to make it profitable at the end. Hope it helps.

Can't agree with that, I know many families, that buying for example potatoes on whole winter (around 100 kg - 120kg on family) somewhere in November - December.


Another part of this idea - let people grow ANY vegetables, for example, you can't go and buy in supermarket tomatoes called san marzano.


Yes, I understand your point of view, it will be very expensive, if I'll get for example just 10 clients ready to use my service and I understand, that in first months I need to be ready work in "minus". But for example, 250 - 500 clients could change this situation. I agree, that this model still needs some major tweaks, this idea just 3 days old.  

So this would mean that people who are going to use your service will have to plan (or guesstimate) months in advance what vegetables they are going to need. This is why this won't gain traction on a large scale, especially since most people can barely plan a week ahead. You could counter this problem by installing some sort of marketplace where other people can put their vegetables up for sale. But then again why would people use your service when they can go to the supermarket and buy it there?


I really don't see how you are going to beat supermarket prices by 40 to 50%, especially since prices for vegetables are already pretty low since supermarkets buy in bulk and often times have very favorable deals with local farms. And when you're offering 24/7 live stream, which is a cool feature, but it's an expensive luxury for your model. Of course, as your model gains traction it will be easier to reduce costs but since I don't think it will gain much traction I feel like your model will be very expensive (initially).

I like the essence of your idea but the model as it is right now still needs some major tweaks before you can come close to making it into something that can actually succeed.

The only problem (if we can call this a problem it's rather a limit) is the fact that you can only target your local area. Otherwise, it won't worth for someone too far from the farm. (unless you handle the shipping fees, otherwise the price will be too much?)
The good point is the idea itself, I could give similar examples that are working great. (I don't mean a quick-rich business, that's a low ROI btw)
I can even tell you that people will be happy to come to the farm to do all the job.

I don't know how people will react to something virtual, myself when I started to read your post I thought you started to describe a video game good-for-facebook.
Maybe a better approach would be to market the idea as "Get your own land for farming and start as low as 1 buck directly from your sofa" something about.

I had a similar idea to do a real world "farmville" to develop farmland in hunger stricken areas but never could figure HOW to do it.

If you are looking for a team, i may be interested in the future.  

Actually, I thought about mix greenhouse growing and conventionally grown, to be able grow vegetables a whole year.


Eastern Europe. And yes, that what I was thinking about it, services will be available locally at the start.

You forgot to mention your location, it is a good idea but only for a certain country and your clients should be in the same country where the program is operating, I have not heard or read this kind of idea before, since you are the first who brought it, might as well make a patent for it, if it allows to be patented.

My thoughts,

The idea is awesome, with good marketing, phone apps, it will work, I think it is a great idea.

You should include a calendar showing in a year which vegetable grow best, with image and tutorial for kids.

People like ancient vegetable as well, there are so many forgotten or unknown !

Hello everyone,

I'm still trying to find a business idea and as usually sharing with bitcointalk community to get an opinion.

So, basically, I'm thinking now about online farm aka online food shop (where you can plan and grow any vegetables online).

How it will works:

After a user will create an account, he will need to choose what kind of vegetable he wants to grow and amount of vegetables.
After that system will show approximate time of growing and how much it will worth (this price will include everything, starting from seeds, farmer job and ending with shipping).
And If a user will agree and will pay, then he will receive access to his virtual part of the land, where he will see everything live (live stream, information about the growing process, what and how much was added during growing, and progress).
When vegetables will be ready to ship he will get a notification.  On this stage (and during all growing) he can choose to sell his vegetables to someone on this platform or to me if he feels, that he planned too much or he can buy from someone if he needs more.

In the end, the user will get organic clean vegetables with 40 - 50% off from prices in supermarkets.

Waiting on your thoughts!