Source: ROOTED FARMERS, LLC submitted to NRP
REDESIGNING FLORICULTURE MARKETPLACE & INVENTORY MANAGEMENT TOOLS FOR SMALL PRODUCE FARMS TO INCREASE ACCESSIBILITY AND REDUCE COST
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1028445
Grant No.
2022-40000-36951
Cumulative Award Amt.
$124,953.00
Proposal No.
2022-00734
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
May 1, 2022
Project End Date
Mar 31, 2023
Grant Year
2022
Program Code
[8.12]- Small and Mid-Size Farms
Recipient Organization
ROOTED FARMERS, LLC
320 DOGFORD RD
ETNA,NH 037504310
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Demand is increasing for locally-grown foods, but small- and mid-size farms struggle to scale their operations to meet the needs of a highly fragmented supply chain. The application of Rooted Farmers' technical infrastructure has demonstrated improved scalability (up to 250% year-over-year growth in sales) and corresponding economies of scale (75% reduction in administrative labor hours) among small- and mid-size floriculture operations broadly throughout the US. Translating this technology to produce-focused agriculture operations has the potential to yield analogous results, meaningfully increasing profitability and scalability among such small- and mid-size farms, while simultaneously improving critical quality-of-life factors. Rooted's demonstrated effectiveness in increasing sales and improving profitability and quality of life across floriculture farms translates to US produce farmers, where the opportunities are great.In this project, the Rooted team intends to build off of its succesful floriculture platform and expand into produce crops. We believe that the same technical solution that has been successfully applied to floriculture can broaden its impact by helping growers of other crops to increase profitability and scale through streamlining market access and reducing administrative efforts required of growers. At its core, the Rooted platform aggregates grower inventory and provides market access of that inventory to buyers across the country. To ensure that produce farmers' and buyers' viewpoints drive the design of the platform, this project will start with qualitative market research to inform ultimate software design. Upon modifications to the Rooted software, we will validate the effectiveness through pilot launches of the updated platform (including produce) and conductfollow-up interviews with market research participants to quantify the success of the platform along key metrics.
Animal Health Component
50%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
50%
Developmental
50%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
60400010001100%
Knowledge Area
604 - Marketing and Distribution Practices;

Subject Of Investigation
0001 - Administration;

Field Of Science
0001 - Administration;
Goals / Objectives
The primary outcome of this PhaseI effort will be a prototype addition of produce offerings to Rooted's existing platform. We will work with faculty and experts at The Experiment Station within the University of New Hampshire's College of Life Sciences and Agriculture to validate the effectiveness of this prototype technology to improve produce farmers' sales, profitability, and quality of life via case studies of a sample of rural farmers across New Hampshire. We will also determine areas for future development and refinement, as well as optimal ways to commercialize this extension to Rooted's existing technology platform. In these ways, our Phase I preparation activities will provide a strong foundation for the Phase II refinement and nationwide scaling project. The envisioned Phase II project would provide the necessary funding to transition our technology from a prototype into a credible product that can be broadly offered across the US.Our suite of farm-driven software will provide significant benefits for small- and mid-size produce farms, analogous to its performance in the floriculture industry. The most meaningful expected benefits include: (1) Lower operational costs; (2) Increased profitability; (3) Increased scalability; (4) Improved networking & diminished marketing expenses; (5) Improved quality of life for farmers and administrators; and (6) Environmental benefits to localizing the supply chain.The primary technical objective of our PhaseI effort is to architect a pilot product and demonstrate useful and relevant aggregation of produce agricultural products, validating increases in profitability and scalability for small- and mid-size farms, analogous to our previous research and market impact in the US floriculture segment.
Project Methods
Gather Specifications: The project team will perform qualitative research to understand both farmer and buyer needs in order to build software requirements and ultimately inform a build-out plan for a produce extension to the Rooted platform.Grower-side Research. The Rooted team will leverage deep existing relationships with the more than 325 farmers who are already members of the Rooted floriculture platform, many of whom also grow and sell produce. These growers have a good sense of how those crops differ from flowers, with respect to the types of tools that are needed to increase sales, process orders, and manage inventory. The Rooted team will conduct one-on-one interviews via videoconference with farm managers from at least 25 farms nationwide to garner relevant information. All farms shall have gross annual receipts less than $350,000, and we will sample farms from at least 3 different growing zones. Interview guides will be developed with market research best-practices (MRA Code of Marketing Research Standards, 2013) and will start with carefully-crafted broad, sweeping questions about needs along key dimensions (e.g., inventory management and administration, harvesting tools, sales tools, marketing), and then delving further into specific questions to inform specific features of the produce build-out of the platform (e.g., nomenclature for crops in Rooted's database, units of measurement for given crops, etc.). Interviews will combine Likert scale assessments to quantify satisfaction and importance of key elements, along with open-ended qualitative questions in order to add richness of feedback to inform platform design.Buyer-side Research. In addition to grower-side interviews, the Rooted team will also perform qualitative, one-on-one interviews with at least 30 buyers of produce, with at least 10 from each customer category: grocery stores, restaurants, and end consumers. During the interviews, we will ask respondents to identify: major barriers to buying from local suppliers, major barriers to buying from small- or medium-sized farms, and elaborate on ideal order logistics and lead times (i.e., when orders are likely to be placed, and when deliveries most often happen), etc.Research Data Analyses. Upon completion of the qualitative research with both farmers and buyers, the Rooted team will translate those data, and work in collaboration with experts from the UNH's College of Life Sciences and Agriculture to architect a system of aggregation that incorporates prior research from these academics with the thematic analyses based on rigorous coding of transcripts from primary research performed as part of this Phase I grant. Altogether, this phase will provide information that will be used to guide key requirements and a roadmap for the software development team in Task 2.Develop and Test Software: The project team will write software and develop a database infrastructure that will provide web-based tools for growers to sell produce crops on the Rooted Farmers' platform, and for buyers to access those crops using the same tool.Rooted Farmers' business- and operations-focused team members (CEO; Operations and Finance Manager), along with our colleagues at the UNH's College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, will collaboratively lay out requirements for the software development team, informed by qualitative research performed earlier in the project. Following the strong development process (agile sprints and Git version control) and infrastructure model (a PostgreSQL database with a Node.js server application on Google Cloud Platform) architected over several years of building and iterating on Rooted's proprietary floriculture technology, our Lead Engineer will translate research-driven requirements and specifications into the development of a database framework, relevant logic, and software in order to put the research-informed design into practice.Rooted Farmers' software development practices are iterative, meaning that modules are developed and released incrementally. This allows internal software testers to evaluate the accuracy and effectiveness of each module as it is released, rather than waiting for a complete, large software package to be released before there is any benefit from a feedback loop. In each release-and-test iteration, members of Rooted's team tests the software from a functionality standpoint, after which point, the software is released in "beta" (i.e., testing mode) to end users so that they can evaluate functionality and provide first-hand feedback to the Rooted team for any changes that they would like to see made. In this task, we will specifically target feedback from interview participants. This type of iterative approach ensures that the software meets end customer needs, and it also means that more individuals are testing the various functions, leading to any software bugs being caught in an efficient manner. We anticipate at least one major redesign as a result of initial beta feedback, with at least 4 subsequent, smaller releases to address residual comments. This is the same successful model from our floriculture roll-out.Pilot Testing: The project team willbroadly pilot test the software developed across a pilot program of new and existing growers and their respective buyers interested in utilizing produce functionality in the Rooted system, with a goal of 15-20 grower participants, and at least double the number of buyer participants. Feedback loops, including weekly videoconference and/or phone calls, will be utilized to collect and disseminate any non-urgent feedback to the project team, while any urgent feedback and/or bug reporting will follow the existing channels for our floriculture platform: automated error tracking and reporting systems, combined with an email reporting system monitored by several Rooted staff members in order to continuously prioritize and resolve any and all necessary changes and/or refinements.During the period of performance for this Phase I SBIR grant, there will be little effort to commercialize this software beyond existing farmers and their buyers (or buyers that they invite onto the platform). More extensive commercialization efforts to broaden the impact and use of the platform with small- and mid-size farms nationwide would happen during a Phase II effort.Market Validation: During the market validation phase, 10 farmer and 15 buyer use cases (5 from each buyer segment) will be evaluated in detail, following each stakeholder's use of the piloted software. These case studies will be developed from either existing flower growers who have piloted the produce functionality, or from new produce farmers who participated in interviews. Further interviews will be conducted with a subset of farmers and buyers who used the platform in the pilot or testing phase, and case studies will be developed to document the effectiveness of the produce crop build-out of the Rooted Farmers' platform. In particular, we will have respondents rate, on a 5-point Likert scale, the ability of the platform to affect the following key metrics for growers, in terms of: (1) Time spent on administrative, non-farming tasks (e.g., inventory management); (2) Ability to access buyers / increase sales; (3) Self-perceived quality of life and personal time; and (4) other metrics flagged as important by our grower-side research in Task 1. We will also have buyers rate, on a similar 5-point Likert scale, the ability of the platform to impact their: (1) Ability to access local product; (2) Ability to access product from small- and medium-sized farms; (3) Percentage of total demand that could be fulfilled locally through small- and mid-sized farms; and (4) other metrics flagged as important by our buyer research.

Progress 05/01/22 to 03/24/23

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audiences that our project will impact includes small- to mid-size specialty agriculture producers, those producers' buyer groups (grocery stores, schools, hospitals, restaurants etc.), and will have the greatest impact on food hubs (hubs are sometimes known as producer cooperatives or collectives). These groups serve as aggregators for small- and mid-size farms who in the end, allow for small producers to reap the benefits of economies of scale while avoiding working with corporate wholesalers. Many farmers in our target audience are women, minorities, or members of rural communities. In the end, the greater food system and all involved will be positively impacted by the efforts, dispersion and distribution that can come for our target audience. Changes/Problems:We did not have any major changes other than redirecting our efforts away from one user group. Our team initially planned to also integrate meaningful feedback from end consumers, but as our research progressed, we decided to limit our area of focus to the business to business (B2B) aggregation for two reasons. First, the need to move high volumes of product through true aggregation systems became abundantly clear through our discussions with representatives throughout Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, our partners at University of New Hampshire's CoLSA. Additionally, our discussions with hub administrators revealed that the technology solutions that currently exist in the market for true B2B aggregators and small and mid-size producers are poorly architected, antiquated, and not user-friendly; in contrast, there are numerous direct to consumer (DTC) platforms in the market providing usable solutions for producers and consumers. Second, this pattern matched challenges and necessary solutions that we have already observed and solved throughout the US floriculture supply chain. There is a much greater need to solve the more complex B2B/wholesale, where no viable, scalable, efficient solution exists in the market. While this finding fell outside of our original purview, we are confident that it was appropriate to eliminate DTC research at this stage of development to allow our team to focus resources on a solving for a scalable, efficient, and user-friendly B2B solution with effort towards a DTC solution to come in future iterations. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project has not provided any specific or intentional opportunities for training and professional development other than networking for our participants and professional development for the Rooted Farmers team internally as we learn and navigate the process of managing and administering a grant. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Thus far, the results of the project have been disseminated to communities of interest rather informally by word of mouth through networking and personal email or verbal communication with our participants and partnering institutions. There are plans to prepare more comprehensive result documentation and to communicate more broadly through marketing efforts in Phase II. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The primary technical objective of our Phase I effort was to architect a product prototype and demonstrate useful and relevant aggregation of produce agricultural products, validating potential increases in profitability and scalability for small- and mid-size farms. This effort is analogous to our previous efforts in US floriculture. We planned to accomplish this through five workplan milestones: 1) Develop a framework for aggregation; 2) Identify customer preferences; 3) Develop an integration plan with existing floriculture platform/marketplace; 4) Conduct pilot tests with produce farms and a representative sample of buyers; 5) Develop Phase II test plan.Our key takeaway was the greatest opportunity to serve small- and mid-sized farms at scale in the US begins within an aggregator (hub) model, increasing the speed at which a scalable solution can be delivered across the country by first solving the complex B2B/wholesale challenges where no viable, scalable, efficient solution exists in the market.In summary, we, along with our partners at UNH CoLSA, along with our participating hubs, farms, buyers, and our new partners at Cornell CALS and RPI are extremely excited about the success demonstrated through our Phase I research. Our Phase I research validated the unmet need for a Produce+ solution for small- and mid-size farms, solving first for the critical food hub aggregation needs, which is analogous to our existing floriculture aggregation software; we are confident that our experience in floriculture will prove to be our greatest competitive advantage. As the exclusive provider of aggregation software to more than 30 producer hubs across the US, our team is uniquely positioned to execute on the buildout of an analogous solution in adjacent modes of agriculture. Our relationships with UNH, Cornell CALS, and RPI will enable us to engage critical subject matter experts in each area of product development, and Phase II commitments formed from both hubs and producers across the country to serve as advisors and pilot testers on our proposed Phase II product will allow our team to build user-informed technology, increasing the adoption rate across the country. These partnerships, combined with our team of business experts, farmers, developers, and horticulturalists, uniquely position us to effectively build operational efficiencies for small- and mid-sized producers while simultaneously resolving concerning vulnerabilities throughout our food system. Thank you for the opportunity to build for this community!

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